Eugene Coyle wrote: > In the New York Times yesterday and again today a columnist and blogger, > John Tierney has advanced the argument that "richer is better" for the > environment. His argument is that richer countries have the resources to > devote to cleaning up their environmental damage and to obviate more damage.<
raghu writes: > More precisely, the richer countries have the resources to clean up their damage and obviate the consequences to THEIR CITIZENS mostly by dumping their pollution onto the poorer countries and continue polluting on a grander scale than before.< Supposedly part of the "environmental Kuznets curve" is that as people get richer, they find that they appreciate the environment more. I guess market-supplied goods as a group represent an inferior good. Alternatively, without improvements in the natural environment, there are diminishing marginal returns to market-supplied goods. But a lot of it involves dumping the pollution on other countries (the ones that are more desperate), as raghu suggests. Gene: > ... I don't know Tierney's political history -- and only read stuff where > the > headline catches my eye. But these blogs seem to me to have a clear > political purpose at this moment.< His science columns in the NYT (and the one op-ed column in section 1) are consistently right wing. He does not seem especially smart, since there are always letters the next week that make decisive points against his thesis. Example: he argued that the health department of the city of NY was experimenting on its residents -- without their consent --by restricting the salt intake of food, despite the fact that allegedly there's no research showing any connection between excess salt consumption and ill-health. Letters said among other things that (1) you can always add salt to your food if you want; and (2) the food companies have been experimenting on us by adding salt to food. On the positive side, Tierney seems to be a friend of Christopher Buckley, who (though conservative) writes some very funny books. Also, his spelling is good. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
