Tuesday, August 30, 2011

How Much Progress Is Sustainability Worth?

“This proposal places too much burden on working families in terms of jobs and money” – Senate Majority Leader
How much sulfur emission will it take to keep our happy little family safe and warm
Sweetheart, is that nest of songbirds really worth Daddy’s job down at the cube farm
We don’t actually need any of these butterflies to keep the kids in school, do we, dear
Won’t they still make those happy-ever-after children’s movies even if all the frogs have disappeared

Honey, it really is a choice between our family and those cuddly-looking little bunnies
You see, if they get to live then we might have to change our traditional happy family lifestyle
Nature is real nice and all but daddy’s got to make money to buy us all of this nice stuff
And, you know I would chop forests, bulldoze meadows, poison rivers and stripmine hills just for you

How many good jobs is it worth to dump sex-changing chemicals into the little stream by our house
Just ask lucky pig farm employees where their antibiotics are building stronger MRSA for us all
What do the unemployed loggers say even as their clear cuts still silt up rivers and kill the salmon
How many caribou would I wipe out to still be able to commute alone to work to keep you happy

Little darling, we’re ripping up the fields to plant fake grass to help you grow up safe and secure
Daddy’s got to run that bulldozer so Mom can buy our white bread, chips and hot dogs
Environmental preservation is one of those luxuries our family just can’t afford right now, sweetie
After all, how many steady jobs is an inedible and ugly little desert fish really worth to us at home

Yes my daughter, the roof I put over your head today may indeed add a bit of PCB to your breast milk
But, if we don’t get food on the table today, our kids wont even be here to enjoy what we preserved
So we eat this tortured beef to help bring costs in line with our ever-decreasing spending power
What’s a bit more Grand Canyon smog if it helps attain coal-fired energy independence for our kids

Right, so we should regulate commerce because some exotic mussel may unbalance the Great Lakes
So what should we give up for soil microbes some study contends are so important to agriculture
Look, we’re barely getting by and you say we need to sacrifice more just to clean up the rain
I’ll trade a years work now for your sake against your distant future, my bright-eyed son

Hey, we’re just folks trying to get by and we got to eat and drive to work. Well, don’t we?
That 5 billion lbs of poultry waste drained into the Chesapeake each year keeps chicken in our pot
In the meantime, we only know the house loan just readjusted and the kids need new school clothes
So what if my job doesn’t really yield more than just cheap, takeout environmental destruction

Its worth building shoddy, overpriced dream homes if I can make the payments on the family pickup
Baby, we’re voting for coal and oil so you can grow up and have kids of your own
What percent unemployment would we tolerate just to make the wetlands safe for frogs
How many need go hungry so a few elitists might get to see the stars and experience natural silence

Sing along with Mommie now Drill-Baby-Drill, that’s it honey, once again, Drill-Baby-Drill
Look, we can barely afford our Cell and Cable bills, much less some liberal wacko’s carbon tax
OK, so we just turn down our air-conditioners, keep the windows closed, burn coal and vegout
After all, if we cant put food on the table what’s that fairytale ecosphere worth anyways?

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