Ecosystem damaged by fiat currency?

[Mahkato]

Question from a friend:

Do you know of any books, articles, or sites that explore the links between fiat currency and destruction of ecosystems?

(I'm guessing general stuff on environmental damage from centrally-planned economies is also what he's looking for.)

[orafi]

Well a trillion dollars is a lot of trees I'd say

[Zippyjuan]

It is more capitalism than currency. There was no ownership of the environment which encouraged people and companies to overuse and expoit it.
If you have to pay the guy who owns the trees to cut them down you will not cut down as many as you would if the lands were public and you did not have to pay for the right to cut them. If it does not cost you anything to dump your waste into the river or pump it into the air rather than to capture it and pay to haul it to a dump you will toss all your waste into the air/ water.

[Mahkato]

Well a trillion dollars is a lot of trees I'd say

Lol. Although it's not like we harvest trees without replanting, and we don't clearcut huge swaths of land, so not saving the trees isn't really all that damaging.

[roho76]

Well a trillion dollars is a lot of trees I'd say

Feel free to correct me but US Dollars are not made out of trees. They are made out of cotton and linen. And didn't a lot of people get sick when they used to burn money in the streets? That seems like an eco hazard to me. Don't know if it's true or not but I've heard stories how there is some nasty chemicals in money.

[FrankRep]

Well a trillion dollars is a lot of trees I'd say

Brilliant. :D


Feel free to correct me but US Dollars are not made out of trees. They are made out of cotton and linen.

D'oh

[orafi]

Feel free to correct me but US Dollars are not made out of trees. They are made out of cotton and linen. And didn't a lot of people get sick when they used to burn money in the streets? That seems like an eco hazard to me. Don't know if it's true or not but I've heard stories how there is some nasty chemicals in money.

"Currency paper is composed of 75 percent linen and 25 percent cotton. Red and blue synthetic fibers of various lengths are distributed evenly throughout the paper. Before World War I these fibers were made of silk. "



Fiat's material isn't even genuine : (

[Epic]

fiat currency = big government = bad for environment

[FunkBuddha]

Question from a friend:

Do you know of any books, articles, or sites that explore the links between fiat currency and destruction of ecosystems?

(I'm guessing general stuff on environmental damage from centrally-planned economies is also what he's looking for.)

I get where your friend is coming from on this and I'd like to see some links too. It would be a kick ass topic for a research paper for one of the students here.

[teacherone]

Print the following graphs on transparency paper:

1) monetary supply,
2) CPI
3) population increase
4) temperature increase (as "reported)
5) C02 increase
6) species extinction

overlay them.

You will notice that they are all exponential curves and ALL MATCH.

Now decide which came first and you have an argument.

I wrote about this here (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=212335&highlight=fed+dummies) (long post-skip to the bottom) but some of the graphs disappeared or were incorrect.

Interested to read your opinion.

[Isaac Bickerstaff]

Fiat money is the driving force behind our overconsumption as businesses wrongly believe that they can produce their way out of debt. Of course borrowing money to fund production only creates more debt and never more wealth as someone else needs to borrow in order to purchase said wealth.

Closer to my home, since farmers are a major dumping ground for debt, many farmers are hamstrung and are being exploited by unscrupulous wind developers. The modern wind debacle was started by the CIA (John Eckland) on Altamont Pass, just outside of San Fransisco. It was a financial disaster with only a few (such as Eckland) making money, hundreds losing money, and creating many unintended ecological problems.

1.5 MW or greater wind turbines are NOT green!!!! Each turbine foundation, or "anchor" requires 300 yards of concrete and 60 tons of rebar. The 120 foot long blades are made of fiberglass and resin--not exactly carbon neutral. In fact, the initial carbon footprint of a large scale wind turbine takes the turbine 15 years of operation to work off--at idealized efficiencies, not reality, which is usually half of what is projected. This does not include the required maintenance such as reblading, the natural gas used by the peaking plants in "spinning reserve" to compensate for the intermittent nature of wind, or permanent damage to the agricultural land that these turbines are sited on.

Healthy farmland works to sequester carbon. As plants grow, they take carbon out of the air. If they are allowed to decompose naturally when they die, fungi will sequester that carbon in the soil for up to 80 years by "gluing" it in place with a substance called "glomulin". When healthy soil is massively disturbed such as it is during the construction of one of these industrial skyscrapers, the carbon that had been sequestered is released due to the disruption of the soil biology, and the destruction of soil structure hampers the soil's ability to efficiently sequester carbon for decades.

Of course, most of the dillhole farmers signing up with the wind developers do not care about soil biology since farm subsidies--enabled and required by the debt based fiat money system--encourage farmers to use petroleum based salt fertilizers, GMO's, poisons such as agent orange (you know it by its new name, "Roundup"), 2,4,D (They put this one in your hand sanitizer, "Triclosan"), and anhydrous ammonia (hello? WWII Pacific campaign airstrips anyone?)--all of which release previously sequestered soil carbon and destroy the soil's ability to sequester new carbon.

Unfortunately, this issue cannot be easily communicated with soundbites, but yes, I believe that fiat, debt-based money is definitely harming the environment--more than just the Saudi Arabian oil for debt program.

I don't ,however, believe that this is a discussion that "beginners" should be having as there is so much disinformation out there that needs to be addressed first.

Edit: Here is a link to a good book on the subject: http://www.acresusa.com/books/closeup.asp?prodid=754&catid=27&pcid=2
http://www.acresusa.com/books/graphics/6546.gif

Here is one to thousands of pages of documents (PDF) on the wind debacle: https://www.edockets.state.mn.us/EFiling/edockets/searchDocuments.do?method=eDocketsResult&userType=public
In the search window, select "08" then type "1233"

[Adam Kokesh]

I think it's a two step connection. (1) Fiat currency leads to corporatism and general lack of accountability which (2) opens the door for abuse of natural resources. Sorry I don't have any great links or books for you, but if you can explain those two concepts, making the connection shouldn't be too difficult. I'd be interested to see if anyone has studied the connection in a single body of analysis.

[Zippyjuan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

The tragedy of the commons refers to a dilemma described in an influential article by that name written by Garrett Hardin and first published in the journal Science in 1968.[1] The article describes a situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently, and solely and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen.[2]

Central to Hardin's article is an example (first sketched in an 1833 pamphlet by William Forster Lloyd), of a hypothetical and simplified situation based on medieval land tenure in Europe, of herders sharing a common parcel of land, on which they are each entitled to let their cows graze. In Hardin's example, it is in each herder's interest to put the next (and succeeding) cows he acquires onto the land, even if the carrying capacity of the common is exceeded and it is temporarily or permanently damaged for all as a result. The herder receives all of the benefits from an additional cow, while the damage to the common is shared by the entire group. If all herders make this individually rational economic decision, the common will be depleted or even destroyed to the detriment of all.