I have become a vocal critic of current defense spending. Mind you, I was a hawk during the cold war period, but we haven't had any kind of global threat since the end of the Cold War two decades ago. Terrorists? Maybe a thousand really bad guys worthy of our neutralization. But a defense budget of more than half a trillion dollars?
My very first Huffington Post article almost four years ago provided an elegant solution to catalyzing world peace. More recently, U.S. News and World Report had a virtual debate on cutting the defense budget, involving luminaries such as Ron Paul (left) and J. Randy Forbes (right), Chairman of the House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee. My viewpoint rose to the top.
My very first Huffington Post article almost four years ago provided an elegant solution to catalyzing world peace. More recently, U.S. News and World Report had a virtual debate on cutting the defense budget, involving luminaries such as Ron Paul (left) and J. Randy Forbes (right), Chairman of the House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee. My viewpoint rose to the top.
Rather than continuing to pad our defense budget, shouldn't we instead be spending at least as much to minimize the effects of Peak Oil and remediate Climate Change as we did for the war in Iraq? The following comparison is ridiculous, but I include this visual to point out the ridiculosity of this all:
These figures are in million dollars (per year). The source for energy R&D expenditures is from the National Council for Science and the Environment. Take a look here. Though the war in Iraq now costs about $120B a year, two authors (one a Nobel prize winner) estimates the total cost of this war exceeds 2 Trillion Dollars.
“Accrued liabilities for U.S. federal employees’ and veterans’ benefits now total $4.5 trillion. Indeed, our debt for veterans’ health and disability payments has risen by $228 billion in the past year alone…The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the interest payments on the money borrowed to finance the Iraq war will total $264 billion to $308 billion.”
That $2,000,000,000,000? Well, that amount of money could’ve built solar thermal plants here that would have provided energy for 2/3rds of our nation’s energy demand.
Posted by Dan Hahn and sent to me by Andrew Yanoviak. Mind you, I don't think it would have been wise to invest $2 trillion in solar thermal plants, but you get the point.
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