The Nature of Things…

When we discuss human lives and the toll of war, we don’t talk about it in terms of dollars. We look at these things in context of human obligation, not finance. But when we talk about the nature conservation and global warming, the conversation has somehow gotten mired in dollars, though what’s really going on is we’re arguing about human life. Consider increasing asthma death rates as reported by the American Lung Association, which have been increasing in the United States at a statistically significant rates.

But that last bit is an aside. The problem with talking about things in terms of human lives is that we’re a capitalist society. This means that if it doesn’t have a price tag associated with it, then it’s going to be ignored. How many people right now are arguing about funding for the Ukraine war? The Israel invasion? Right now, and especially when we talk about things that are fuzzy, like wars halfway across the globe, we don’t have a way to quantify the cost savings of our plan, which would go a long way toward shoring up the argument to continue to support the effort to contain Russia.

Because let’s face it: whether we like it or not, there are many millions of Americans who have been primed and learned to hold as valuable only money, and not human life. Being a democracy, we can’t simply ignore them (as much as we might like to). We must convince, and we can do that by proving that morality is cost-effective. Listen to this podcast and understand the world in a slightly more nuanced way!