On Jan 28, 2008 3:42 PM, Bob Sullivan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Frank, > I shouldn't, but... > > So I'm in the 3rd world, not enjoying the nice standard of living you > have in Toronto. > I'd like indoor plumbing, a clean/warm/dry place to sleep, and enough to eat. > You guys burned all this fossil fuel, did all this pollution to raise > your lifestyles. > Now you want to prohibit us from doing the same in our lives? > Without this, we can never develop a economic base to let us live as > comfortably as you.
Absolutely not! Please, have the lifestyle you want, whether you live in India, China, Vietnam, wherever. The assumption is that industrialization will inevitably lead to pollution. That fallacy is being perpetuated by our own corporate leaders, who are profiting handsomely by having most of their manufacturing done offshore where labour is cheap and the countryside is contaminated in all sorts of ways from these new factories. They want goods on the cheap, and they don't care to look to the long-term effects on these populations. Local robber-barons are more than happy to take our money to exploit their own workers, just as we in The West did since the industrial revolution. In reality, starting out "green" is cheaper than "dirty", and these developing countries have a wonderful opportunity to learn from our mistakes and show us how we should have done it in the first place. It also turns out that converting from "dirty" to "clean" is much much cheaper than we're led to believe, and clean and green is far more profitable than dirty in both the long and the short run. We all have to change our mindsets - it won't be painful at all, and the results can only be good for all of us... cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
