A question from Yahoo! Answers:

What would EARTH FIRST’s idea of a planet loving economy look like?

Before you start thinking of a planet-loving economy, you should work out a planet-friendly government. As destructive as private sector can be, its environmental impact pales in comparison to that of government, in particular to that of the military.

According to some estimates (The Boston Globe ran a special report on it back in 1999), the cumulative environmental damage caused by the private sector in the U.S. can be fixed for $60-70 billion. The U.S. Department of Defense is responsible for another $30 billion (and that’s only in the U.S., so the crap they dumped abroad or in neutral waters is not counted); the U.S. Department of Energy (mainly the nuclear programs within it), for $200-300 billion…