There can be no better illustration of how every value is trampled underfoot in the corporate rush to riches than the Bush Administration’s antagonism towards efforts to ameliorate the process of climate change.  Although the issue will affect all of humanity and indeed every living creature, it is forced to take a back seat to private profit.  Over time, the continued failure to address climate change will allow the problem to grow until it becomes untamable.  Yet the White House remains untroubled at the prospect, focusing its attention instead on maintaining the “economic competitiveness” of U.S. corporations, in essence revealing a mindset that values short-term corporate profitability more than the protection of the planet.  In the initial stages, it is the Third World that can expect to suffer the most from climate change.  But in time, no region of the globe will remain immune to its baleful consequences.  If the problem is ignored long enough, the funds required to cope with the effects of climate change will outstrip the resources of even the richest nations.  The price for ensuring continued high profits for favored segments of the corporate world will be paid by future generations compelled to live in an increasingly less habitable world.  The philosophy of laissez-faire capitalism, in which everything becomes a commodity and people nothing more than labor inputs and consumers, treats even the planet itself as a disposable object to be milked of its resources, come what may.  Read More »