Back to the question at hand, I'm not convinced that the developing world's standard of living is higher due to modern technology that they have access to. We'd need a good metric to measure this by. Sure, a significant number of people have more technology in their lives, but technology doesn't always equate to higher standard of living and I'd be willing to bet that *more* people, on balance (even if a lower proportion of the population), live in starvation conditions than a century ago or even half a century ago (someone may be able to prove or disprove that with figures, which I would love to see). Many of these poor nations have families that have cell phones, but intermittent water, power, and even food - how can we even begin to measure their quality of life beyond "surviving" and "not surviving" when so much of their day might go into obtaining bare necessities that they can't develop their nation's infrastructure and economy.
Yet with this consideration, we'd need to see how much of the population boom is "our" responsibility, etc and the accounting goes on and on and I think this becomes a very tricky argument. When is something good considered a credit and when is something bad considered a demerit? Does it require that we merely develop a technology or that we also help them build it out? Should we get credit for telecommunications when they served to send us so far ahead of the non-industrialized world and probably allowed as much or more exploitation as aid? I'd say that in addition to having done most of the damage, we have also been largely responsible for many of the conditions that have kept nations in poverty historically. However, my argument might miss the point. Should we be doing a more accurate accounting of the "liability" of industrialized nations for upcoming damage? I'd say yes - we should, where feasible attempt to incorporate this, but linking it to climate aid will again be hard. I feel that there are certainly credible arguments to both the net-good and net-damage arguments of the industrial->non-industrial relationship, but I'm inclined to believe the net damage argument and also to believe that our emissions are on track to give them significantly more damage - possibly even more instability that prevents them from adopting our technology. It might even be an apples and oranges comparison where our positive externalities are going to do very little to prevent or mitigate our negative ones. Anyway, given the near-impossibility of an accurate accounting of the positive externalities, the developed world really ought to own up to our emissions. It's easy to say that the negative externalities will have similar uncertainties to the positive, but I'd say it's easier to account for cause and effect when you're looking to it in the future than in the past. Sorry to have such a rambling response - I guess the long and short of what I'm saying is that I think your argument has merit, but it would need a very strong broad-based framework for what is good and bad, who gets credit, and when - and I don't know that we can get that. -Nick On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Don Libby <[email protected]> wrote: > From: "Kooiti MASUDA" <[email protected]> > Newsgroups: gmane.science.general.global-change > To: "globalchange" <[email protected]> > Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 4:59 AM > Subject: [Global Change: 3317] Re: Positive externalities > > > >On Dec 22, 12:57 pm, "Don Libby" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> There is not one "only" > >> answer, there are several, which are rational, and they involve the > >> construction of thousands of new nuclear reactors, as in A1T, or B1. > > >And who will control radioactive matter, > >long after people get benefit from it. > ... > >Another concern is that nuclear fuel can be used for > >military or terrorist purposes. > ... > >So the part of the world where we can safely install > >nuclear technology is very limited. > ... > >Maybe, such nuclear fuel cycle that cannot yield > >nuclear bomb matter can help. (Thorium cycle? I am not sure). > ... > >Ko-1 M. (Kooiti Masuda) > >From the county which got nuclear-bombed (though I do not usually say > >this) > > Yes you raise many good points, and I agree that great caution must be > exercised to reduce these dangers. > > In my opinion, long term disposal of nuclear residues can be managed by > isolating it from the biosphere in the lithosphere or deep ocean floor. > > Fuel cycle facilities -- especially enrichment facilities -- are strongly > regulated and should continue to be strongly regulated. > > The part of the world where nuclear power plants already operate includes > India and China, where most of the new plants should be built. India is > actively researching the Thorium fuel cycle. > > Yes the historical tragedy suffered by Japan gives us all reason to treat > this technology with great respect. It is remarkable that Japan has since > become a world leader in the development of nuclear power engineering > technology, and will continue to do so, I am sure: Toshiba owns > Westinghouse. > > Thank you, > -dl > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, > moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy > dimensions of global environmental change. > > Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the > submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not > gratuitously rude. > > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
