“Addressing greenhouse gases and addressing the economy are all part of the same problem,” said Wiley Barbour, founder of the American Carbon Registry, talking about the effect that the financial crisis will have on climate change. “This is absolutely a top priority. It can’t be postponed forever.”
In “Will the Environment Lose Out to the Economy,” Time’s Bryan Walsh poses an apprehensive question: What happens when another more alarming, more immediate catastrophe co-opts people’s fear? Always one with a solution, Walsh offers greens a way to avoid irrelevance, now that “Hank Paulson is replacing Al Gore as the nation’s chief scold…” and funding for clean energy weakens. Thomas Friedman called it “greening the bailout,” a complete overhaul of a failed infrastructure. This means tax credits for new solar systems and increased federal funding for renewable energy that would decrease unemployment via “green collar jobs.”
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