February 27th, 2007

This news articlereports about members of the rainforest Action Network advocacy group, dressed as billionaires, protesting in front of the Merrill Lynch office at the Citigroup Center, NY, for what appears as contrasting positions of Merrill Lynch on coal. Could this little band of scrappy advocates be right? Is big business such as Merrill Lynch, an investment house that has gained massive wealth seizing opportunities, merely doing just that and not putting their money where they claim their environmental mouth is?
Bad news for the environment if we continue to dump everything up in the air. Some groups want to tax that ability. They think people will find smarter ways of doing things if you ask them to pay for what they have been doing for free. May work. But the mechanisms involved would be complex, at the very least. At some point, a levy-system will be put in place that must be applicable and implement-able in all instances across all countries. Unfortunately, we are still far from that.