As Lester Brown put it, we as a society, 'have been behaving just like Enron, the rogue energy giant, at the height of its folly.'  We rack up stunning profits and GDP numbers every year, and they look great on paper 'because we've been hiding some of the costs off the books.'  Mother Nature has not been fooled.  That is why we are having climate change.  That which is not priced is not valued, and if our open lands, clean air, clean water, and healthy forests are not valued, the earth, when it is this flat and this crowded, will become a very hot, no-cost landfill very fast.  When markets underprice goods and services by failing to price their externalities, and the impact of that underpricing has highly negative economic, health, and national security implications, it's the job of government to step in and shape the market to correct that failure.

• climate change
• government
• usa
• society
• nature
• will
• change
• energy
• market
• shape
• numbers