Last month George Bush announced a stimulus package in excess of $150 billion. If it means most of us will head straight to the local Apple store to get the latest iPhone or some other slick gadget, well, you’d be stimulating the economy, granted, but you won’t be doing the environment any favors.

The bottom line is that every new gadget you buy will stimulate more of the same gadgets to be re-ordered from China’s booming their energy thirsty consumer electronics industry. And the more consumer electronics they produce for the American market, the more energy (aka oil) they’ll need to produce those gadgets we’ve come to love. And (dare I say it) the more oil they need, the more demand for oil there’ll be leading to higher prices for us at the petrol pumps = greater inflation = deeper recession.

Now this isn’t such a far reaching argument as you’d think. The consumer electronics industry is the fastest growing, energy hungry industry on the planet, and China’s demands for oil has not entirely been born out of their new found love for the Cadillac. It’s their breathtaking industrial demand for energy which is notably having a speculative effect on the world’s energy prices. Granted, they are trying to curb this with the opening of new open face coal collieries, but this won’t exactly benefit the environment either.

Solution born from our own common sense

In reality, most Americans are hardly in the mood to rush to the mall clutching the $600 rebate they’ve just inherited from a failed administration. With the Foreclosure rate up 57% from this time last year, it’s likely to be used to keep the banks away for, say, a couple of weeks more at best. Hardly stimulating stuff. In a climate of despair, climate change is low on the agenda for most.