I will agree with you that Obama shouldn’t try to do too much too soon and put the entire system in jeopardy. However, it’s ludicrous to blame this deficit on him–he’s cleaning up the problems he inherited. The budget deficit under McCain would not be much smaller–and if it was, it wouldn’t have done anything to slow the deterioration of the economy. Any whatever you think of Obama and his stimulus package, you have to admit it has helped cushion the blow. Serious economists–and by serious I mean non-partisan–believe, almost universally, that if anything is wrong with Obama’s plan, it compromised too much, devoted too much to tax breaks, and simply isn’t large enough.

With regard to the actual story at hand, spending a little more to prevent further environmental degradation is nothing but a bad thing. For far too long we and the rest of the world have operated under a market system that didn’t bother taking into account the natural costs of our activities. It is entirely possible–though growing less and less likely as more scientific evidence appears–that humans’ affect on global warming is not as major as some posit. However, you cannot deny the damage we are doing to our environment in general, and nobody–not scientists, not academics, and certainly not politicians or the general public–understands the full implications the collapse of even a handful of ecosystems around the world. The results could be minimal, or they could be catastrophic. Why risk it?

The blind devotion to economic growth at the expense of all else is ignorant at best and downright idiotic at worst. The paradigm needs to shift, or we’ll find ourselves on a much less-hospitable planet in the years to come.