You’ll have to take my word for it that the notes to this article have been sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks, waiting for a topical moment in which to post it: I didn’t have to wait long — this afternoon (or morning, depending on where you are), Barack Obama proposed an idea quite alien to the military-industrial machine’s normal aspirations. Rather than wage endless war, allowing the defense (attack) industry, plus their counterparts in oil and construction, to cream off the vast profits created by “strategic global realignment”, he suggested that $1.5bn a year should be set aside for Pakistan for non-military purposes, such as sanitation, schools and infrastructure (ok, there might be a bit of money in it for Bechtel, but c’est la vie).

This idea will, of course, be heatedly debated in Congress: how can the USA spare such a vast amount of money helping another country’s people when there are such financial difficulties at home? Quite. After all, a one trillion dollar baleout doesn’t come cheap; there are banks, insurance companies and investment houses to save from the vaguaries of the global market. So what if a billion and a half dollars could be enough to prevent local insurgency, saving the lives of soldiers who — regardless of your position on foreign affairs — have a bloody awful job doing what they are told in such a deadly area? The hierarchy is becoming clear: to see how it stacks up, here’s what I say in Time’s Up!

It seems so obvious, especially after reading to this point, that in order to thrive as a species, humanity is dependent on a fully functioning, healthy and diverse global ecology. When you turn on the television news, listen to the radio or read a newspaper, the state of the global ecology is shown clearly as improving or deteriorating in quality overall, with x number of species having evolved or become extinct, and certain trophic levels becoming more or less dominant. Or rather, this is what we should be seeing and hearing: instead, we learn about the state of the global economy, whether the markets are rising or falling; how many jobs have been gained or lost; which companies are taking over others, and which sectors of the economy are thriving or failing. The economy is king; the ecology is a footnote.

Listening to the radio today, there was more “bad news” with the latest figures from the UK Office of National Statistics showing that the British economy had fallen by 1.6% in the last quarter. If you read The Earth Blog, you will know by now that there is a neat correlation between economic activity and the release of climate changing gases, so this would suggest that there will be a reduction in emissions during the same period — in fact, according to recent figures, there has been a significant drop in UK road traffic, largely from the reduction in freight and commuter driving.

Bad news, isn’t it? A fall in greenhouse gas emissions. Might give us a bit more time to save humanity, but still bad news, because it’s the economy that counts: more than our future on the planet, more than the safety of ordinary people in Pakistan, more even than the lives of American soldiers — considered a scourge by many people in battle torn nations, and quite clearly considered just cannon-fodder in the eyes of the great and good who still regard a growing economy as the only game in town.

There is, indeed, a war to fight: the enemy is greed.