Legally it may only be the tobacco industry which is now on trial ("Tobacco Firms Face U.S. in High-Stakes Trial") - morally, if we would but face up to it, it is our whole socio-economy order, which gives "overriding " priority to making money.

Is it not insane that a country which has spent billions of dollars trying to ensure the safety of a few score astronauts, has at the same time spent far greater sums of money encouraging people to get or stay hooked on smoking, which causes millions of deaths world-wide every year.

How do you get your head round that? 

Simple: just follow the money . . . .

Whether it is astronaut safety or selling cigarettes, both are money makers - one moral and admirable, the other immoral and despicable. 

It isn't just the owners and executives of the tobacco industry who made (and are still making) money from their pernicious products, of course. There are also the tobacco growers, retail outlets, the advertising industry,  and the media which carries (carried) the ads; and there are all those who profited (are still profiting) from sponsorship. 

When did the NYT stop carrying tobacco advertising? (I don't know, because I live in London and have only been accessing it via the Internet for the past few years). How long did it take for the health and longevity of its readers to be placed before the need to make money from advertising revenue? Or did it only stop when legal required to do so?

The sad fact is that we give "overriding "  importance to making money. It literally overrides all other considerations, at least until a particular way of doing so is declared illegal; although, even then an army of lawyers is often put to work (and very well paid) to find ways around it.

The trouble is that we are so used to it, it is such a ubiquitous and integral part of our lives and economy that usually it doesn't even occur to us to question it. And those who do, quickly accept it as an unalterable fact of economic life. There is an assumption that if everything didn't revolve around money the world would fall apart, descend into some primitive (feudal or stone-age) condition, or worse, into a communist dictatorship.

Personally, I do not think that you can get a lot worse or more primitive than making money from an addictive and deadly habit that claims millions of lives every year.

Money is one of man's greatest and most important inventions, without which any kind of sophisticated society would be unthinkable. I certainly would not want to go back to a barter economy. The thing is, we have never learned (and never shown much interest in learning) how to use money fairly and responsibly. Quite the contrary, we have made a fine (and legally refined) art of its misuse. Much of our economy, millions of jobs and 10's of thousands of private fortunes depend on the misuse of money.

There are many laws, of course, which aim at preventing what is recognised or perceived as the misuse of money. It is all the misuses that are not perceived or recognised, or are allowed to continue because of massive resistance from vested interests that are the Problem. That is Problem with a big "P".

How long have we known about the addictive and harmful effects of smoking? And yet we are still struggling to stop the tobacco industry from actively encouraging people to smoke. Now that we are getting the better of them here, they are turning their attention (and "evil" intentions) to the "emerging markets" of the third world. 

And it is not just the tobacco industry, of course. The automobile industry makes money from the sale of motor vehicles. Never mind the number of people they kill, the damage they are doing to our climate and environment, or the huge amounts of non-renewable resources their production and operation consume. Making money is the "overriding " concern. The same applies to the aviation industry. 

I mention these two industries in particular because their further expansion to include what will soon be a global population of 7-9 billion people will mean at least a 6-fold increase on current levels of motorisation and air travel, which are already placing an unsustainable drain and strain or Earth's limited resources and finite carrying capacity. It is utter madness, but because so much money is being made from it, blinded by narrow, short-sighted self-interests and the "normality" of it all, that is what we are doing, overriding (ignoring, denying and suppressing) all considerations of what the catastrophic consequences for our children and coming generations must be.

Why are we not putting far more effort into developing renewable sources of energy, which for the sake of our children and coming generations we ought to be doing?

Again, the answer is very simple: there is much more and much easier money to be made from plundering (sorry, I mean "exploiting", of course) Earth's limited supplies of oil and gas, for as long as they last. 

And when they've all been use up and Earth's climate is topsy-turvy from the green-house gases they produce?

That's in the future. We (or our children) can worry about that when the time comes. Right now we are making lots of easy money. What can be more important than that?!

What indeed?

Money is a form of power, like the sword or the gun, only far more sophisticated and versatile. Human history would be unthinkable without any of them, being the story of their use and sadly, more often than not, their misuse.

It is in man's primitive (more animal than human) nature to use power for his own individual advantage - or, depending on your perspective, to misuse it. Human history is the story of the use/misuse of power. 

Following our primitive, "more animal than human " nature, everyone defends their source of income, their means of making or acquiring money, as if it were their life.

Our growth-dependent economy and grossly materialistic lifestyles are based and dependent on this same primitive, "more animal than human " nature. Not surprisingly, considering what we now know about our animal origins.

We are at a turning point in human history (hopefully! Otherwise it will be the end point), because the misuse of power, mainly the misuse of money, is leading us towards global catastrophe and possible extinction.

We have to create a socio-economic order based instead on our more enlightened human nature. Otherwise we will perish.