豆知识 2011-12-04&12-10 美国政府破产的故事 (3/3)（在线收听） |
So why is there always enough money for the dinosaur economy, from big oil to bailouts for big banks, but when it comes to building a better future, we’re supposedly broke? Maybe it’s because these guys know how to ask for it. Their lobbyists and giant campaign contributions let our government know what they want and what they'll do if they don't get it. And it works. US senators who voted to keep big oil subsidies in 2011 have received five times more in Big Oil campaign cash than those who voted to end them. So while subsidies should be a tool to help companies that are helping us all, they’ve become a prize for those with the most power to get on the handout list. But you know who has the real power? We do. What if we got as protective of our tax dollars as we are with the rest of our money? What if we told our government what we want and what we'll do if we don't get it, starting with voting them out! We could redirect these dinosaur subsidies, freeing up hundreds of billions of dollars. Forget broke, we could start building a better future right now. We could begin by reinvesting the 10 billion dollars that we spent on the oil and gas subsidies into renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. With just half of that amount, we could provide solar energy to about 2 million households. Then use the rest to retrofit half a million homes, creating jobs and saving energy year after year. The average cost of cleaning up a toxic superfund site is 140 million dollars. Let's make the polluters pay and instead invest our money in developing safer materials, so we don't have to worry about spills in the first place. Most chemicals today are made from oil. That's why they're called petrochemicals. Switching just 20% of them to safer bio-based materials would create over 100,000 new jobs.
And instead of subsidizing garbage incinerators, let's subsidize real solutions, like zero waste. Raising US recycling rate to 75% would result in 1.5 million new jobs with less pollution, less waste and less pressure to harvest and mind new stuff. What’s not to like? That would still leave billions of dollars for improving education - the best investment for a healthy economy. With a hundred billion dollars, we could increase the number of elementary school teachers by over 40% and give college scholarships over 6 million students.
See, we can rebuild the American Dream. We can afford to have a healthy environment, good jobs and top-notch public education, but not if we continue subsidizing the dinosaur economy.
So the next time you have an idea for a better future and someone tells you, ’that’s nice, but there is no money for that,’ you tell them we’re not broke. There is money. It’s ours and it’s time to invest it right. |
| 原文地址：http://www.tingroom.com/lesson/yyjsdzs/2011/175633.html |