As Christopher Robin pulls us down the stairs towards climate chaos -- bump! bump! bump! -- we might think that there's something else we could do, if only we could stop bumping for a moment and think about it.
That relentless slam to the back of the head is called economics, and it's used to convince us that, while keeping the climate from tipping into some wild new state that humans have never experienced might sound good, it really doesn't pencil out.
The estimable Sam Smith unearths this gem of economic logic while revealing something very important about Larry Summers, who apparently includes one B. Obama in his fan club:
In 1991, Larry Summers signed a memo when he was vice president and chief economist of the World Bank concerning the handling of pollution in less wealthy lands. When an excerpt of the memo was leaked, more than a few people became upset. Summers initially took responsibility for the memo but claimed it was satirical. Later, blame for writing the memo was taken by aide Lant Pritchett. Pritichett went on to lecture at the Harvard Kennedy School and Summers went on to be president of Harvard.
If the memo was in fact intended to be humorous, whoever wrote it didn't understand that humor used against the poor and defenseless is not satire but ridicule and bigotry. The fact that Summers thought it funny should disqualify him from any government position.
The excerpt:
'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:While Summers and Pritchett survived the memo incident, the Brazilian secretary of the environment was not as fortunate. He was fired after writing to Summers:
1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.
2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.
3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is is 200 per thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility impairing particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable.
The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.
"Your reasoning is perfectly logical but totally insane ... Your thoughts [provide] a concrete example of the unbelievable alienation, reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional 'economists' concerning the nature of the world we live in ... If the World Bank keeps you as vice president it will lose all credibility."Composer John Halle has memorialized this seedy memo and the Brazilian official's reply with a musical number performed by the Sequitur Ensemble, Kristin Nordeval and Dora Ohrenstein, sopranos.
Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things
Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change
Cash for Clunkers brought us ... more clunkers!
Comments
View as Flat
JGHalle Posted 10:35 am
24 Nov 2008
Enjoy!(?)
John Halle
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:47 pm
24 Nov 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Stephanie Ogburn Posted 3:33 pm
24 Nov 2008
Stephanie
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JMG Posted 4:23 pm
24 Nov 2008
http://is.gd/8UGh
The 5% Project
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
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amazingdrx Posted 4:37 pm
24 Nov 2008
There's no excuse for putting creeps like this in jobs where they have responsibility over the lives of people. Plenty of sharp but compassionate people would like to have these positions.
How many creeps have we all seen in vital positions? Why do the Cheneys of this world rise to the top like scum on a cesspool? Because our government/corporate culture IS a cesspool?
It's the old chicken or the egg dilemna. Which causes which? The cesspool or the scum?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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amazingdrx Posted 4:48 pm
24 Nov 2008
This creep, along with Gramm, Greenspan, and Rubin was in on the crucial moment that regulation was prevented.
Now we know where the blame really should be placed for "derivatives" and "credit default swaps", whatever they really are, these creeps obviously never understood them, and don't to this day.
Obama is heading for trouble already, this is very disturbing indeed!
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:53 pm
24 Nov 2008
This guy makes sense.
Take a look at our "health care crisis".
Well, something like 95 percent of all medical costs occur during the last 8 months of life.
Because we live in a "developed" country, where most natural causes of death have been eradicated, we live long enough for us to die of cancers and heart attacks. These are not so much diseases as total body failures from age.
Or take that film about Super Sizing. There are people in this world who eat junk food all the time and yet are skinny as a rail and fairly healthy.
If we let evolution take its course, McDonalds would be a natural selection agent and eventually our entire population would have a gene pool capable of digesting a quarter pounder without negative effects.
In the same way, I bet there are people now who actually are adapted to both Global Warming and pollution. If you took some of it away, they might go around coughing and saying things like "the air is so...clear...I think I'm going to stay inside today and maybe run the car's exhaust for a while".
Texeme.Construct.Questioner
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vakibs Posted 9:28 pm
24 Nov 2008
Let's think in terms of eco-dollars.
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JGHalle Posted 9:29 pm
24 Nov 2008
Try this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG7xONmZz0Q
John Halle
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:24 am
25 Nov 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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jestbill Posted 1:28 am
25 Nov 2008
His point is just that you can twist arguments around to justify most anything positive or negative.
It's been 17 years and he still can't catch a break.
Where have all the horses gone?
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rsmith02 Posted 3:44 am
25 Nov 2008
Look up reductio ad absurdum, Jonathan Swift's modest proposal, or most episodes of the Colbert Report for other examples.
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GRLCowan Posted 4:05 am
25 Nov 2008
--- G.R.L. Cowan ('How fire can be tamed')
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan
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JMG Posted 4:22 am
25 Nov 2008
The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.
In other words, even if you agree that Summers was being satirical in proposing something as outlandish as offshoring pollution (as if we don't have a world full of exactly that), he was doing it to show that certain arguments cannot be embraced because they could equally be made against the Bank's REAL love, total corporatization of the world.
The 5% Project
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
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Jon Rynn Posted 4:49 am
25 Nov 2008
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