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Nobody in the United States has to apologize for living in nice houses, eating well, investing in education, spending money on health care, or enjoying life. Despite what the U.N. would have us believe, those things did not come at the expense of the third world or the global environment.

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.

"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."

Respectfully disagree. It's not up to the US to shore up nations that have chosen bad politcal systems that are the root cause of their poverty.

I am sure Bush is willing to have a dialogue, it is his opponents that do not want to listen. Why should he have gone to J'burg when all he would have heard is, "Gimme, gimme, gimme?"

Two countries in Latin America, namely Argentina and Brazil were comparably as rich, on a per capita (and in the case of Brazil) and an absolute basis as the the United States in natural resources. Russia, which spans over 6 time zones, has a resource base second to none. Yet these countries managed the surprising achievement of both remaining poor and destroying their environments.

None of them practiced what we understand as capitalism under a constitutional and representative government. The rising tide of American pollution which you correctly describe as being curbed from about 40 years ago stems directly from the interplay of market forces -- and representative government. The market penalizes excessive pollution, once these costs are manifested, and strives to reduce them. Legal liabilities are a cost. Cleanup is a cost.

None of these costs are properly priced in command or corruption based economies like China or Brazil. Hence the despoilation will continue in these countries until their systems change. The sustainability of an ecosystem is based on the correct working of the markets -- including intergenerational transactions; but then we have a futures market and financial instruments which could, conceivably provide a trade in these cross-time events.

It is often pointed out by "environmentalists" that the US consumes 25 percent of the world's resources; what they don't say is that it produces over 30% of the world's output, or something like that. When you consider how much of that "average" is already skewed by America, Japan and the Europeans, you get a sense of how destructive Third World manufacture is. Where is the marginal car or ton of steel more cleanly produced? China or Australia? China or the United States? Which country is penalized for polluting? China or Australia? China or the United States. No wonder there's a brown cloud heading our way. May it stop in Johannesburg.

I think that's the chief failing of Bush Administration foreign policy in this arena;
Your position then predicates that it's also the chief foreign policy failing of the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, the Reagan administration, the Carter administration, the Ford administration...from 1970...the Nixon administration and possibly even the Johnson administration.
Did I miss any?