Saturday, December 6, 2008

Green = Money

I was walking through the trash yard here at the Station and kicked an aluminum can. That made me think of the cans back home and how some have written on the sides how much certain states will pay for recycling.

...that got me thinking about Iraq and wondering if they recycle... that could be a way to get some of the factories going again here and get them productive. Productive factories mean jobs and jobs mean more money to buy products from productive factories.

...and that got me thinking about home and about how our economy seems to be struggling. If we started really putting monetary in developing "green" products and energy efficient technologies, we could develop jobs (and you know the cycle that starts up).

Oddly enough, I was reading through a Newsweek (10 November, 2008) that LCdr Bernstein sent to me (thank you Sir!!!). There was a great, two page article on this same concept.

The article talked about how much money governments were paying for this kind of technology (wind-energy, non-fossil-fuel cars, etc.) and how many jobs were being invented by forward thinking, ecologically minded entrepreneurs.

I asked one of our terps, who grew up here in Iraq, if they had a recycling system in Iraq. He said that they used to, but since 2003, it has gone away. We both agreed that it would be a good thing to get going again.

Then we both kinda sat there, nodded, and went our separate ways... the good idea factory was working, but we realized it would produce little results sitting in our brains. Guess I will have to bring that up next time I find myself visiting socially with the Ramadi Mayor.

...in the past, it has been the tree-huggers that have prevented advances in technology because they were concerned it would degrade the environment. Now it looks like they have a niche to make technology better.

Semper Fi,
m

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