The United States in America launches space shuttles with such boring regularity that it doesn't even make the news anymore. Hearing this country criticized by some guy from a country where the people still pee in their drinking water is comical.
That's a very short-sighted viewpoint. No, our wealth didn't come at the expense of the third world, that's correct. But our wealth DID come from the heavy use of America's natural resources. The United States had/has abundant forests, most of which were removed for farmland on the entire East Coast. The incredibly rich topsoil of the Great Plains allowed the most intensive farming anywhere in the world. Coal, oil, gas extracted from the U.S., starting in Pennsylvania and heading west provided abundant energy for U.S. economic expansion. Extensive mineral resources provided the raw material for iron and steel. Combined with the awesome synergistic power of freedom and unfettered capitalism (which sometimes had to be reined in -- anybody remember the Teapot Dome scandals, or "trust-busting"?), the U.S. became a powerful economic engine. And the free world survived because of it, particularly in World War II.
But unless the North American continent is not part of the global environment, this economic prosperity did come without some expense to the global environment. And things were getting so bad in the 1960s, clean water- and clean air-wise, that most of the nation was behind the acts which finally started to do something about it. The marked improvements in our air and water quality date from 1970. The United States did something about the environmental effects of its economic prowess; the Clean Ai and Clean Water Acts are models for environmental law in countries around the world.
What the writer forgets is that many other Third World nations do not have what the United States had. A great example is India, which was a British colony until the middle of the 20th century! India's economy didn't benefit from its natural resources, Britain did. And the same applies to Africa: about 3/4 of the continent was colonial at least into the first third of the 20th century. So now they need to expand economically using their own natural resources, but not in the same profligate and environmentally damaging manner that the United States did. And the United States can best help not by providing aid, (most of which gets stolen by corruption) but by exporting knowledge (technology), the tenets of capitalism, and the advantages of freedom. We have the capability to do that; we should do it.
Unfortunately, we waste the advantages of our esteemed position when we appear to be insular in protecting our wealth and less-than-connected to the problems of the Third World. I think that's the chief failing of Bush Administration foreign policy in this arena; not demonstrating through dialogue that our system is the one that works best. If the U.S. showed better engagement on building the economies of developing nations, we would be in a much better position to export the advantages of democracy and freedom.
I'm confused about one thing.....When some poor soul is being necklaced with a tire and a pint of petrol for not giving up half his pay to the local war-lord, who exactly is it in the industrialized west that is preying on the weak?
As for the larger economic question, markets work to distribute resources, but they don't always come up with the "right" answer in all cases. This is basically a political debate. The UN wants to get what we have, one way or another. Cato wants us to keep it. What the enviromental results will be remains to be seen.
We aren't responsible for pollution in other countries, but Cato goes too far in separating the clean "us" from the dirty "them." That dirty state is something they go through, and something we went through, in hopes of attaining the affluence Cato celebrates.
