Sustainable growth: bad for people, environment
Darren O'Connor
Technician
RALEIGH, N.C.
As the World Summit on Sustainable Development gets underway in Johannesburg, South Africa this week, I can't help but wonder why so many developed nations want to handicap the developing nations in the name of "saving the planet."
The delegates from the industrialized world ostensibly want to make sure the Third World continues to develop but with all sorts of environmental restrictions. The goal is economic growth without environmental damage. Well, guess what. It doesn't work that way in the early stages of industrialization, and that's OK.
There will be some pollution and other damage as these countries develop, just as there was when the United States and Britain started to industrialize. It's not that big of a deal, people. The planet and the human race have been through a great deal over the millennia, and it turns out they're both pretty resilient.
Besides, the faster these countries are able to develop, the sooner they'll begin to clean up their environments, just as we have. Placing lots of "sustainable growth targets" and other restrictions on these countries will only prolong their period of environmentally damaging development.
President Bush has made the right choice in not attending this summit. It is shaping up to be a combination of indignant Europeans scolding the United States for not doing more for sustainable development and leaders of corrupt Third World nations demanding more U.S. aid money, which they will subsequently blow on weapons and palaces and other purposes to which foreign aid is typically diverted.
If we really want to help alleviate poverty and reduce environmental degradation in developing countries, the last thing we want to do is continue to subsidize their current practices by throwing money at them.
Last I checked, the government already confiscated far too much of our paychecks for such purposes domestically. The best thing to do for these countries is reduce trade barriers (especially in industries in which those states have a comparative advantage) and encourage democratic and market reforms in them. That way, capitalism is working at its best and Americans and developing countries both benefit.
Only when these countries are well on their way to industrialization will they have the luxury to worry about the environment. It's odd that left-wing groups who claim to want to help the world's poor are the chief proponents of policies that would keep them in perpetual poverty. (But, hey, as long the trees aren't being hurt, right?) These organizations (Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, etc.), as well as the socialist (and even not-so-socialist) European countries, are being incredibly disingenuous in their empty rhetoric. They ought to just come right out and say it: They're not interested in helping these countries develop at all.
Judging by conversations I've had with people in similar groups around here, I'd bet money that these activists would like nothing more than for these countries to remain as they are and for the rest of the world to degenerate to that same level. Human suffering seems to be irrelevant to these people as long as we aren't choking our "Mother Earth" with our evil, evil SUVs.
I can safely say that I'm proud to be a citizen of the greatest, most advanced nation in the world. We have come a long way in the last hundred years, and unlike Europe, the United Nations and the antiglobalization activists, I would very much like to see the rest of the world do the same.
Worldwide prosperity and development is good for everyone, and it's the surest way to improve the state of the environment.
This is not a trivial issue as we enter the 21st century. The next time one of your professors spouts off a self-righteous criticism of President Bush's opposition to economically damaging policies like the Kyoto Protocol or sustainable development targets, challenge him to provide some logical reasoning behind his position. It should be amusing to hear the subsequent jumble of Marxist catch phrases that pours out.
The column first appeared in the Aug. 28 edition of Technician, the campus newspaper of North Carolina State University. It is reprinted here courtesy of U-WIRE.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Friday, August 30, 2002
