Americans are feeling the pinch of stagflation. Going to the grocery store and to the gas station leaves consumers in a state of sticker-shock. Neighbors are losing their homes. Retailers, restaurants, and countless other businesses are closing their doors. Mass layoffs are being announced with alarming frequency. As inflation and joblessness spiral upward, the economy plunges to greater depths. Opinions abound as to why America’s economic ship is taking on water. Just as certainly as John McCain has personally witnessed global warming, I have ascertained the cause of America’s economic malaise. Indeed, in a moment of deep insight, I have discovered that our economy is sinking in direct proportion to the rise of the environmental movement. The greener Americans become, the further our economy falls.

Please understand that I have written this essay holding myself to the same standards as eco-alarmist Stephen Schneider. In the spirit of scaring humanity straight into the clutches of the green movement, Dr. Schneider (a Stanford University Professor) stated the following in the October 1989 issue of Discover magazine:

To say the least, the green movement is presently receiving loads of media coverage. Day after day anthropogenic global warming is mentioned on TV news, PBS documentaries, talk shows, etc. Fortune 500 companies are paying for expensive television ads declaring that they have gone green and are fighting to protect Mother Earth. We are being harangued to conserve this, recycle that, and boycott something or other. Americans have been so saturated with environmentalist gobbledygook, that green has become mainstream.

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If one person epitomizes the rise of the green movement, it is Al Gore. He is the environmental movement’s self-appointed ambassador who has brought a high degree of legitimacy to the green movement. Mr. Gore has accomplished this by winning, in 2007, a Nobel Peace Prize and an Academy Award for his "documentary" An Inconvenient Truth.

Today, thanks to Al Gore, greenies are riding high. For it is they who are the anointed ones who have the answers to prevent hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, soil erosion, flooding, osteoporosis, indigestion, migraine headaches, and shark attacks. (Of course, their real objective is to eradicate humanity, but that is an issue I have covered previously). And, true to Stephen Schneider’s "vision", the green movement’s success has been built upon a pack of lies.

For those who want an antidote to the gibberish being spewed by greenies, I highly recommend The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism by Christopher C. Horner. As for attempting to understand the natural fluctuations pertaining to Earth’s climate, a terrific book to read is The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change by Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder. I also recommend this article about the distinct possibility of global cooling. But I digress.

So let’s get back to the robust correlation between the rise of the green movement and the decline of the American economy. Greenies, and their political minions, are constantly bossing Americans around. Watch out for having too large of a carbon footprint. Did that bottled water come from Fiji? Recycle your paper, your plastic, your metals and don’t you dare mix any of these materials in the wrong recycling bin. Don’t water your lawn, get a low-flow toilet, and for gosh sakes replace your incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent ones. Are you driving an SUV? Shame on you. Think globally, but act locally. Blah, blah, blah.

An enormous amount of physical and mental energy is expended to make the green busybodies happy. None of this "work" is productive. Sure there are those who feel a sense of fulfillment by following these mind-numbing edicts from greenies – as one feels more connected to nature and to a worthy cause (I suppose). I have little doubt that green sympathizers are the same people who celebrate the income tax so that money can be forcibly taken from bad people and transferred to the good downtrodden proletariat. Hurray for April 15th! All in all, going green is a monumental waste of time and energy. It is, consequently, a drag on our economy and a proximate cause of economic decline.

MBAs, across the country, have been indoctrinated with the claptrap that just about anybody or anything can be a stakeholder in a business. It is passé to believe that simply treating employees well and pleasing customers are the keys to business success. No, it is now chic, and politically correct, to integrate varying degrees of environmentalism into a company’s business plan. For Mother Earth herself is a stakeholder in every business. The intrinsic value of nature must be acknowledged and celebrated in order for a business plan to be credible. By embracing such twaddle, it is no wonder once-great American companies are slipping into mediocrity or worse. MBAs, from top business schools, are part of the problem, not the solution.

Recently, some of Wall Street’s mightiest companies – such as Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Wachovia Corporation – have had to go begging for money to repair damaged balance sheets. Due to blatant numbskullery, these titans of finance have lost focus and poisoned their respective corporate cultures with standards that are impossible to meet. After all, how does one perform as a stockbroker, on an environmentally-sustainable basis, so that the stockbroker may protect the global ecosystem? How does a loan officer see to it that a loan is being originated in an environmentally-friendly manner? How can a financial company, or any company for that matter, really battle climate change? Wouldn’t this entail controlling the Sun’s output? Good luck with that. Business planning, peppered with green ideology, apparently causes companywide brain damage. Thus, it is no wonder that these companies have reported staggering losses.

In each company’s own words, here are their respective declarations of greenness. Read it and weep (or laugh). I did a little of both.

What a load of tripe. Multiply these declarations of greenness by countless companies, and it becomes obvious that American businesses have lost their way. It would be hilarious to compel corporate executives to define exactly what "sustainability" means and how they can measure their respective contributions to environmental sustainability. By diverting precious capital and human resources toward nebulous objectives such as eco-sustainable business practices, innumerable companies are damaging themselves and the economy as a whole.

As Wilfred Beckerman stated in his magnificent book A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth:

To be sure, green companies may as well rewrite their respective business plans in order to concentrate upon searching for, and capturing, griffins and unicorns.

Without a doubt, by using the green movement’s "correlation equals causation" methodology, I have proven that America’s current economic downturn is directly correlated with the meteoric rise of environmentalism and its damaging effects on business management (just as certainly as global warming brought about the destruction of New Orleans). Using this standard, set by greenies themselves, feel free to blame environmentalists for what may be unfolding as the United States’ next Great Depression. They’ve earned such opprobrium.