Brad DeLong>> Well, don't you think it is? Wouldn't you be very happy if African
air had more sulphur dioxide in it, and Africa were a richer place?
The question is: "how much of one, and how much of the other?"
**** How do we put incentives for innovation and technology transfer in place and create property and contract rights that don't generate massive inequality while lifting living standards in the South? Giving them the best technology with the lowest effluent profile should be the goal. Just tell all the engineers in the US to give up hope of making $$ off more needless weapons systems. Then we could actually do something humane and green with "foreign aid".
Personally, I think that developing countries poorer than Mexico is
today should have *no* obligations to control their emissions of,
say, greenhouse gases for the next fifty years. What is to be done
ought to be done, as a matter of simple justice, by the industrial
core.
*** Don't we have the obligation to just give them lowest effluent profile technology? Sure it will cost us a lot for a decade or so; isn't that the simple justice you speak of. And just what are the institutional barriers to said transfer? No obligation on their part is an obligation on ours and not in that stupid WMB manner that the FT was ranting in yesterday. Or is our gov. infuckingcapable of simple generosity.
On the other hand, I would be unhappy (and you would be unhappy) if
there were more oil pollution in the Niger delta, and nothing in
exchange but fatter first-world bank accounts for Nigerian generals...
*** Then get your friends to file an Amicus brief on behalf of the Ogoni people against Shell in NY City's Federal Court. Then maybe we'll make some progress on the "corporate accountability" front.
tryin' to think like a species,
Ian