Greens, Free Marketers Clash Over Development of Third World

[Nambe]

Cybercast News Service (RW source)

Just prior to the World Trade Organization's (WTO) meeting in Cancun, Mexico, this week, free market advocates and environmentalists are sparring over the best way to develop the economies of poor nations.

The environmental movement's emphasis on sustainable development - the phrase used to describe earth-friendly projects - often triggers criticism from free market advocates who see it as ineffective and unrealistic. However, those free market believers are promoting a "lawless society" when they criticize sustainable development, according to a top environmentalist who insists modern-day developers must accommodate "nature's limits."

Leon Louw, a member of South Africa's Free Market Foundation who will be in Mexico for the WTO event, cautions: "There is a great danger of eco-imperialism in the environmental movement." He participated in a Cato Institute workshop on the subject of sustainable development, held in Washington, D.C., last week.

Louw rejects the premise that poor nations should be limited to developing their economies in ways that environmentalists consider earth-friendly. ---

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. The Island of Hispanola is used as an example of

land which was developed without proper environmental concerns. The part which is nearly devastated is called Haiti.

[kwolf68]

2. I support a mixed economy

This is an old argument. In the mind of these radical capitalists, the Third World should NOT promote an environmentally safe policy…because

The developed world is using them for exploitation. We can export garbage, nuclear waste and toxic waste to the third world. Further, if we need to make a product we can dump PCBs into rivers in the Third World as opposed to the US because we now know the environmental and health risks of such pollution.

See, to these free-marketers we are DOING the third world a favor by exporting our trash, waste, and debris. We are doing them a favor by setting up plants where they get to bring in toxic fumes 16 hours a day. If any regulation of the environment was placed on the Third World…you see, those people wouldn’t have a job.

We used to do that in our own country. We polluted rivers, felled forests, burned up the sky, brought about Acid Rain and subjected workers to appalling and unsafe conditions all for the benefit of the very few. Of course, it was spun as a “jobs program” to enforce men to breath in soot all day long, children to be forced into sweatshops, and industrial conditions on par with a battlefield as 700,000 people died between 1886 and 1906.

The environment is a nuisance to these people because it isn’t readily known how bad the destruction is…and it also shows these capitalists as the greedy and hypocritical bastards they are.

In the end, exploitation of the environment by industrial polluters is theft. Because the damage caused to the environment by production of any product costs us lives and money. This cost is NOT born out by either the producer or consumers of said product. Instead it is left to fester or society picks up the tab for cleaning the environment. This concept of cost internalization is standard market economics theory, yet “market economists” seem to dismiss it or ignore it.

In the end, the free marketers aren’t interested in a what is right and how the best way we should go about solving problems and creating a more sustainable world. They are interested in one thing and one thing only: Radical Right-Wing Ideology