[PEN-L:1825] Re: Environmental Quality in Developing Countries boundary="part0_914306050_boundary"

[Nativejmc@xxxxxxx]

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On the comments blow, my own comments are:

a) I can think of a long list of "non-democratic"/anti-democratic regimes set
up and social systems engineered as non-democratic/anti-democratic regimes in
the service of US and other imperial interests; in fact those imperial
interests are secured and expanded through these alliances/regimes. And as for
the so-called "democratic" regimes, well there we get into de jure versus de
facto and what do thse labels really mean.

b) How about a variation on the celebrated marginal productivity theory where
instead of each "factor" being "rewarded" according to its marginal revenue
product or marginal contribution to the value of total output, perhaps each
"nation" is responsible to absorb/dispose of/recycle--on its own soil--a
portion of global pullutants proportionate to its "marginal contribution" to
global pollution? Something like "no marginal benefits" without proportionate
"marginal costs"?

c) Unfortunately, global jetstreams. ocean currents, atomspheric patterns,
topsoil erosion flows, rivers, migrating populations, epidemiological patterns
etc are poor at recognizing nations and national boundaries. In economics and
politics and other spheres, where do the limits of a given economy or society
really begin and end?

d) The isolated car in a rural setting without anti-pollution equipment very
rapidly becomes the clone of many in cogested and polluted urban settings
under the dynamics of capitalism and capitalist-driven globalization. As for
choices about optimal allocations of scarce resources consistent with "social"
needs and imperatives, well that calculation rarrely if ever occurs or is
intended in market-based calculations--except when system-threatening crises
emerge.

e) The rich who run the so-called "developed countries" are in some ways like
the affluent running to the surburbs to build insulated "communities", higfher
and more electrified fences, hiring private security and screening the hired
help with hidden videos while keeping them poorly paid and at arms length.
Eventually oppression, misery, disease, poverty bring resistance and mobility.
Then no walls can be built ilt high enough, no electrical field will be strong
enough, no security guards tough or trustworthy enough, no national borders
secure enough and no imperial forces enough in numbers and force to hold off
the "hoards" coming on many fronts. It is a question of imperatives and
necessity eventually exposing and checking hubris and power. That's why I like
the Titanic metaphor/allegory so much. Yes more rich got out and had a greater
chance of survival than second-class and steerage, but they went down
also--playing cards and listening to music certain the ship would never sink
while it sank all around them.

e) Out of 73 targerted EPA toxic waste sites, 72 were on Indian Reservations.
There is also the matter of International Law, Common Law of Nations, the
Vienna convention and other standards (UN Convention on Genocide) and even
bourgoeis rights held sacred that can be used and will be used to limit major
pollutors contributing more hubris than their proportionate contributions to
global pollution and far ess clean-up responsibilities/costs than their
marginal contributions to global pollution that are at each others throats as
well as alienating and marginalizing large segments of the global community;
their own sacreds call into question the very properties and behaviors they
purport to protect;

Just some thoughts.

Jim Craven

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Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 20:58:03 -0800
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Brad De Long <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [PEN-L:1821] Re: Environmental Quality in Developing Countries
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I'm not going to defend Lant Pritchett's inept and overwritten memo, or
Lawrence Summers' signing it (although I would note that
Summers-as-academic is known for giving credit to RAs and elevating them to
co-author and lead-author status much more than most of his ilk).

But there is a serious issue here. In Ghana--where 60% of the urban
population has no access to the sewer system, where 70% of energy still
comes from burning wood and charcoal (and where rain acidity as a result at
times reaches Black Forest levels), where 40% of people drink contaminated
water, and where 15% of people suffer from waterborne diseases--should
taxicabs have to have catalytic converters installed?

The "no" argument is that it adds $700 or so to the cost of the automobile.
That $700 could--if it were used wisely--be devoted to upgrading the sewer
system, or building a water purification plant, or expanding the electrical
grid so that smoke emissions from firewood could be reduced, or importing
medical supplies to treat people once they have gotten cholera. Any of
these would do more good than harm would be done by the extra CO and SO2
emitted by the taxicab over the course of its life.

The "yes" arguments--there are two--are, first, that we will never gain
control of our environmental problems until clean-up is viewed not as
merely one goal to be traded-off against others but as a fundamental
ethically-mandated constraint on all human economic activity; and, second,
that the $700 saved won't go to the sewer system or the water purification
plant or for medical supplies, but to the Swiss bank account of some Deputy
Assistant Secretary and nephew of the Colonel commanding the First Armored
Brigade somewhere in the Cayman Islands.

There is also a fourth argument: What business is it of anyone in the first
world telling people in developing countries that they can or cannot
pollute? There's a fifth argument: What developing-country government is
truly democratic, and so has the right to legislate a lower level of
pollution protection for its people in the first place? There's a sixth
argument: environmental protection is everyone's business, and the sooner
we get a global pollution control authority in place the better.

I think that all of these arguments have force.

I am inclined to say that democratically-elected governments should be
allowed to run their own pollution-control, environmental-standards, and
environmental-clean up programs: if people in the first world want to see a
greater degree of environmental clean up than democratically-elected
politicians in developing countries feel that their countries can afford,
let the first world pay for it explicitly through government-to-government
negotiations. I am also inclined to think that non-democratic governments
should be held to a much higher standard in terms of allowable emissions
from activities financed by first world (or World Bank) money--a look at
Ogoniland or Lake Baikal or the Aral Sea will convince anyone that
non-democratic governments are prone to make definitely wrong decisions
about pollution.

But these are hard and serious issues where I don't think I have many (if
any) of the answers.


Brad DeLong


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