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SOCY 2130 Environment Essay Perhaps the single most important development in the world today is what is generally referred to as "globalization. " Globalization is partly a result of the tremendous advances in information technology that have, in effect, shrunk the world and linked distant parts of the Earth, creating global relationships. Globalization is also a result of the expanding reach of the capitalist mode of production. Changes in technology and manufacturing organization have fostered the emergence of transnational corporations that have been able to amass wealth within and beyond individual nation-states such that their roles in the economy of their countries and of other countries rival or exceed those of nation-states. Communication technologies have enabled enormous financial resources to be moved from one end of the world to another in a matter of minutes. The instantaneous transfer of vast economic resources has the potential to make or break the economic fortunes of countries and affect the lives and employment opportunities of large numbers of people. Therefore, nation-states are forced to vigorously compete for foreign investment to enhance the rate of growth of their economies.
To attract these investments, nation-states must achieve minimum levels of infrastructure development and, more importantly, maintain a certain degree of economic, social, and political stability. Manufacturing operations have evolved from the classic model (epitomized by the vehicle production operations of Henry Ford in the early twentieth century), in which a huge factory produces all the components as well as the end-product, to an increasingly flexible method of production whereby components are produced in different countries and then assembled at another location close to the market site. Over the years, magazines like The Economist have promoted the idea that financial growth is 'development' and that this 'development' is good for the Third World. However, this sort of growth is not 'development " it is more often than not destruction of the environment, the livelihoods and the cultures of Third World communities. What is referred to today as 'development' is actually 'mal development'.
It is designed and driven by external forces for the profits and control of external agents and actors. The World Bank generates $ 3 of business for western companies for every dollar it lends to the Third World for 'development'. 'Development' allows $ 500 billion to flow out from the Third World to the rich West in interest and debt payments and low prices for Third World products, while $ 50 billion goes in the opposite direction as development aid. 'Development' is a trick played on the people of the Third World, especially rural communities, to rob them of their resources and wealth, and leave them dispossessed and in debt. While the people of the Third World are supposed to be 'developed' by this process, they are instead uprooted and displaced. Their resources are snatched from them, converting them into 'development' refugees. Two hundred million people have been forcibly removed from their homes, ecosystems and cultures in the name of development. The tribals in India's Narmada Valley, the indigenous peoples of the Amazon and Papua New Guinea and the coastal communities along India's 7, 000 km coastline do not view the giant dams, superhighways, mines, ports and industrial aquaculture that uproot them as 'development'.
For them, these activities spell disaster, which is why they are resisting. One of the most ominous commercial developments of the past decade has been the merger of chemical, pharmaceutical, biotechnology and seed companies to create what are called 'Life Sciences' corporations. A more accurate name would be 'Death Sciences', because these are the bodies that produce genetically engineered, herbicide-tolerant seeds which lock farmers into dependence on chemical inputs, destroy biodiversity and render agriculture more vulnerable. For farmers, the shift from open-pollinated plant varieties to hybrids, genetically engineered crops and sterile 'terminator's eed's, is not a symbol of 'development' but of debt, dependency and destitution. For seed corporations, forcing farmers to buy seed every year implies bigger markets and faster growth.
But this increase in corporate profits is based on the destruction of nature and her processes of renewal and abundance, as well as a destruction of local economies. This destruction of nature's economy and peoples' economies is never taken into account by modern economics, and hence processes that lead to ecological destruction and poverty and deprivation for millions are presented as 'growth' in national accounts and the global economy. However, it is not growth when assessed in terms of the health of ecosystems and societies. This contrived pseudo-growth camouflages the destruction it unleashes on the lives of Third World communities. A good example of such pseudo-growth is in Third World agriculture. The shift from a 'food first' to an 'export first' agricultural policy in India is justified on grounds of food security, because export earnings are supposed to pay for food imports.
In fact, export-oriented agriculture has reduced food security by encouraging a shift from small-scale, sustainable local production to large-scale, non-sustainable industrial production. It also brings changes in ownership over natural resources and means of production, from small autonomous producer / owners to large corporate interests. Peasants are displaced from farming, while commercial interests take over land for production of export commodities. These enterprises often have negative environmental impacts, creating further hardship for local communities. On Church Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a large and colorful mural, sponsored by the Women's Community Cancer Project (WCCP), encourages environmental awareness and activism. The mural depicts several women gathered around a model of the earth, and is emblazoned with the motto: "Indication of harm, not proof of harm, is our call to action. " In other words, we should not wait for confirmation of our fears; if something seems horribly awry, it probably is, and will only get worse while we do nothing.
This has been called the precautionary principle, and it is often invoked today in connection not only with chemical pollution, the elimination of which is the goal of the WCCP, but also with supposedly even greater threats like overpopulation and global warming. The problem with the precautionary principle, however, is that it is wrong. One of the peculiarities of the human condition is that we are irrationally averse to risks, and tend to overestimate the probable negative consequences of actions and events. We are fascinated by bad news, and generally bored by good news; more often than not, we tend to perceive things as being worse than they actually are. Whatever the ultimate reasons for this predilection, it is hardly a sound basis for dealing with complex, long-term problems. In the 1960 's and 70 's, a string of alarmist tracts -- most notably Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) and Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1968) -- stoked fears in America and Europe of an imminent apocalypse that, needless to say, never came about.
Strangely, however, we took no notice of the fact that the catastrophes we worried about had failed to occur. Even more strangely, the doomsayers never lost their credibility, instead merely postponing their deadlines to convenient future dates. One person who pointed out the absurdity of all this was the late economist Julian Simon. It is true that Simon had a somewhat bellicose style, and a flair for provocative thought-experiments. (In his 1981 book, The Ultimate Resource, for example, he estimated that the entire population of the world could be supplied with food from an area equal to the combined land mass of Vermont and Massachusetts, or about one-thousandth of presently cultivated land. ) Partly for this reason -- but mostly because his arguments ran counter to what environmentalists believed to be true -- Simon was dismissed as a right-wing crank. Meanwhile, the environmental movement continued to imagine new and even greater problems, all of them requiring immediate action. BUT was Simon mistaken?
In 1997, the Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, a self-described "old left-wing Greenpeace member, " set out to disprove Simon's disproofs and confirm the claims of environmental alarmists. But he failed spectacularly -- and, what is much more unusual, in The Skeptical Environmentalist he says so. In 25 chapters supplemented and supported by almost 3, 000 footnotes, Lomborg takes a fresh look at the data, using the newest publicly available evidence to examine long-term trends in human welfare and the quality of the environment. What he shows is that not only are things not getting worse, they are getting better. Lomborg's tone throughout is mild and modest, and his arguments are exceedingly careful. His explanations are lucid, unbiased, and unadorned by rhetorical flourishes (which makes for a sometimes clumsily matter-of-fact style).
At every possible turn he is willing to grant the benefit of the doubt to his adversaries. Nevertheless, his conclusions are nothing short of breathtaking. Throughout the world, including the developing world, life expectancy is increasing. Food and energy are becoming both cheaper and more plentiful. Natural resources are available in greater abundance. Inequality in purchasing power is decreasing.
The air and water in our cities are cleaner than has been the case in at least 500 years. These are facts, and there is no getting around them. Environmental organizations, when faced with such data, argue that even if they are true, progress has come at too great a cost -- namely, the irreversible disruption of nature -- and is therefore immoral and unsustainable. Lomborg takes on and demolishes this assertion, demonstrating that most of the problems environmentalists predict for the future are unlikely to materialize.
Thus, at least one fear common in the 1980 's -- that acid rain would cause the death of forests -- has already been conclusively dispelled (though we never heard about this from the media). As for the effects of so-called ecological catastrophes like oil spills, these have been surprisingly benign; in almost all cases, the affected ecosystems are well on their way to total recovery. Estimates of the proportion of species likely to become extinct as a result of human activity are also wildly exaggerated, often by a factor of more than 50. Global warming is demonstrably overestimated, and even if the estimates were correct, climate change would most probably not have anything like the calamitous effects that are usually foretold.
Population growth, whose supposed perils constitute a major shibboleth of the environmental movement, is likely to level off in the near future, and in any case there is more than enough food and space in the world to accommodate many more people. If the predictions of environmental doomsayers are wrong, Lomborg also shows that the precautionary principle, if taken seriously, is downright dangerous. Take the simple example of pesticides, one of the great evils fought by the Women's Community...
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