
A new book asserts that rich countries grow with lighter environmental impacts - quickfox
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613845/the-planet-has-a-fever-and-the-cure-is-more-capitalism-a-prominent-economist-argues/
======
mushufasa
This is also called the Environmental Kuznets Curve (1991)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve#Environmental_Ku...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve#Environmental_Kuznets_curve)
.

There's a lot of criticism in the literature. The statistics rarely live up to
the theory at face value. ([https://steadystate.org/wp-
content/uploads/Stern_KuznetsCurv...](https://steadystate.org/wp-
content/uploads/Stern_KuznetsCurve.pdf)). And often, new pollutants emerge in
rich countries as others decline.

For example, in the USA, water pollutants targeted by the Clean Water Act
(1972) have declined, but new pollutants have emerged which aren't measured or
managed by the policy. Recent years have seen an explosion in estrogen
hormones that turn male fish to hermaphrodites that lay eggs, coming from
unchecked fertilizer runoff and birth control sewage.
[https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/02/160203-femin...](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/02/160203-feminized-
fish-endocrine-disruption-hormones-wildlife-refuges/)

~~~
dmix
> The researchers found intersex smallmouth bass everywhere they looked. About
> 85 percent of the males collected in the refuges were intersex. At least
> some males at every site had female egg cells. It was less prevalent in
> largemouth bass—about 27 percent.

Wow that's the vast majority, sounds like it could be a serious issue. What's
interesting is how it's been found near cities and Agriculture but also in
remote areas.

I'm curious how much of a role the waste treatment centers have played which
was noted as a potential source.

Since water can travel long distances via rivers and rain its going to be hard
to pinpoint who or what is to blame. Hopefully they keep digging into that
question.

I also now understand what Alex Jones meant by "gay fish" in one of his
popular rants he was mocked for.

~~~
mushufasa
> What's interesting is how it's been found near cities and Agriculture but
> also in remote areas. I'm curious how much of a role the waste treatment
> centers have played which was noted as a potential source.

There are generally two main sources. 1. agricultural runoff related to
fertilizers. 2. Urban sewage, because birth control products get flushed down
toilets and the wastewater treatment plants don't even try to filter for
hormones (it's not part of the Clean Water Act). And even if they tried, the
methods to do so are nascent ([https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2015/06/19/4153363...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2015/06/19/415336306/hunting-ways-to-keep-synthetic-estrogens-out-of-
rivers-and-seas)).

> I also now understand what Alex Jones meant by "gay fish" in one of his
> popular rants he was mocked for.

Yes, he got unfair criticism for calling attention to this -- it is actually a
huge environmental problem that needs more public awareness. The ecological
impacts are huge, and yes because the water treatment plants don't filter, you
might be drinking similar concentrations through tap water. (edit: to be
clear, the concentrations that harm fish are nowhere near enough to cause the
same level of harm in humans, so no you will not turn gay from drinking tap
water)

He's still a nutcase con man though, IMO. Mixing in a few grains of truth
makes the poisonous ideas go down smoother.

~~~
dmix
All charlatans mix truth with falsehoods.

Alex Jones knows exactly what he's doing with his character. Anyway yeah the
lack of treatment options sounds like a big roadblock.

It seems people can find any fertilizer that doesn't harm the environment
somehow either, whatever is being used has already had to jump through a
hundred hoops first :/

------
hn_throwaway_99
It brings this up in the article, but I have a very difficult time believing
this isn't just because rich countries have shifted manufacturing and mining
to poor countries. Look at recycling. We all thought we were so
environmentally aware by recycling, but turns out so much "recycling" was just
"ship to poor countries to deal with the fallout".

~~~
chewz
Where do you draw the line?

How about Thailand or Malaysia (as an example)? They are both fairly developed
and hoping to avoid middle income trap and become developed countries within
few years. In both countries disregard for enviroment and citizens health is
just sad. Toxic haze, toxic water, pollution, trash.

When is the moment that a country decides that it is rich enough and it is
time to clean its act?

[https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1643388/chiang-...](https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1643388/chiang-
mai-air-pollution-worst-in-the-world)

[https://www.chiangraitimes.com/thailand-monks-adorn-robes-
ma...](https://www.chiangraitimes.com/thailand-monks-adorn-robes-made-from-
recycled-plastic-bottles/?amp)

[https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2019/08/06...](https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2019/08/06/haze-
hits-malaysia-no-area-records-good-air-quality/)

[https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/13/two-
incid...](https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/13/two-incidents-of-
pollution-in-pasir-gudang-affected-thousands-heres-what-we/1771022)

[https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/19/incinerat...](https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/19/incineration-
not-the-way-to-deal-with-plastic-waste-environmental-ngo-tells/1773034)

~~~
dm3730
> In both countries disregard for enviroment and citizens health is just sad.
> Toxic haze, toxic water, pollution, trash.

That was trash that was illegally dumped there by UK, Australia, and other
Western countries, right after China stopped accepting Western trash.
[https://asklegal.my/p/waste-dumping-malaysia-canada-
pollutio...](https://asklegal.my/p/waste-dumping-malaysia-canada-pollution-
plastic-illegal-recycling-environment)

You use a strong sentence "disregard for environment". What facts lead you say
that? Wouldn't the behavior of the Western countries shipping trash over to
poorer countries indicate a much stronger disregard for the environment? Or
are you implying the environment/nature can be split into one that is local to
Western countries and another that is present in developing/poorer countries?

~~~
fyfy18
I don't think dumping is really the right word here. As it says in the
article, importers are illegally accepting the waste and making a good chunk
of money from it. The private companies who are disposing of waste from
Western countries are happy to pay these guys to get rid of it. Still they
could try to check what happens to the waste, rather than just turning a blind
eye. But when the mafia can dump nuclear waste in your own back yard, I guess
it's hard to see what happens on the other side of the world to some plastic
bottles...

[https://gizmodo.com/the-mob-is-secretly-dumping-nuclear-
wast...](https://gizmodo.com/the-mob-is-secretly-dumping-nuclear-waste-across-
italy-1513190243)

------
MrSlovenia
Makes sense: when a country has an industrial revolution it just wants to grow
fast.

Then when the extreme growth part passes it starts to stabilize: this is when
the country & the people start doing well enough so that they can look at
other issues (environmental impact) without having to sacrifice their
livelihoods.

The human will always prioritize his own and his families livelihood. Only
once that is stable can one afford to look at the impact.

If you're poor and can hardly afford basic stuff for your children you
obviously won't care about the environment, it's last thing on your mind.

And if anyone writes "yeah but even poor people should care": no, that is not
how human nature works. First you & your family, only then everything else.

~~~
marmaduke
This is exactly what I think of when I see hopefuls talking about climate
change, among other topics. The guy who doesn't have enough money for rent?
He's not buying the expensive free range eggs.

If I were in a developing country, I would be worried that climate accords
become a other way for those on top to stay there.

~~~
vinay427
> The guy who doesn't have enough money for rent? He's not buying the
> expensive free range eggs.

I suppose you were just providing a random example, but if you're curious the
production of free-range eggs almost certainly pollutes more carbon than caged
eggs [1] while being less ethically sound (assuming that was the consideration
for cage-free), environmentally responsible, and typically more expensive than
plant alternatives.

[1] [https://www.smh.com.au/national/free-range-hens-boost-
carbon...](https://www.smh.com.au/national/free-range-hens-boost-
carbon-20-percent-20111216-1oyvp.html)

~~~
lonelappde
What's the ethical concern of free-range?

Also, the report you cited was the (conventional) egg industry researching
itself, not an independent study.

------
Expez
I recently finished Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker and this exact point
was made in that book. I'll paraphrase a salient quote from the book: poverty
is the greatest polluter.

Intuitively this makes great sense: when you're eking out a subsistence living
you're not going to care about the environment, but when resources are plenty
you can afford to consider other living things too.

~~~
drdrey
That's just not true. The US emits 16 tons of CO2 per capita. For many African
countries, that number is 1-2.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita#Annual_carbon_dioxide_emissions_%5Btonnes%5D_per_capita)

The greatest polluter is everybody living in large single family homes full of
things manufactured on other continents, with AC, multiple cars, eating red
meat every day.

~~~
bro45
The greatest polluter is the economy where the only profitable business model
is planned depreciation to make people buy new stuff. Nobody makes durable
razors because it's a financial suicide. Nobody makes reliable cars, laptops,
toothbrushes. People don't have a choice but to keep replacing things that
break. Manufacturing these things wastes oil, coal and pollutes the
environment. The businesses don't care because disposing the junk is not their
problem. Change rules to make businesses accountable for stuff they sell: the
recycling facility needs to do something with a mountain of broken fridges?
Let it send an invoice to manufacturer. Many companies will go bankrupt. We'll
see how reliable things replace the junk. The economy will slow down because
people won't need to spend so much. There won't be much progress either if you
drive the grandfathered car: no money for R&D, so engineers become repairmen.
No more demand for STEM because the market for making new things is tiny. The
big tech will collapse because its paid by ads and there will be nothing to
advertise. Stagnation, deflation, unemployment, good stamps. As you see, the
solution exists and it's called stagnation. TBH, I'm not sure if it's bad
because currently the world is rapidly consolidating 99% of resources in the
1% people s hands (and make no mistake, they will survive any global warming
that may come). P.S. Single family houses aren't the problem. They actually
store CO2 in the form of wood, which is an easily replaceble resource. If
houses were built from aluminium, I'd agree with you, but they are made from
wood in the US.

~~~
robocat
That's nonsense: you have to look at the whole economy as an ecology of
different waste streams.

The $X money you saved on non-disposable goods would instead be $Y spent on
consumable goods (e.g. some wine or steak - both near 100% "pollution") or $Z
spend on services (e.g. travel - near 100% pollution too) or other permanent
goods $U (an expensive jacket that could last 300 years except it got thrown
out because it looks ugly and smells of Uncle Jack).

If you want to save the world, you need to _directly_ do something that saves
it e.g. protect some native forest, or buy some farm land and let it revert to
wilderness.

Anything else where you are participating in the economy is virtually
guaranteed to have a high degree of waste (buy some eco-friendly meat, but 50%
is retail markup, and the the hippy producer uses the money on a "wasteful"
overseas holiday).

Very few people calculate the total ecological footprint of their actions:
e.g. buying an electric car can easily be far worse for the planet (depending
on cost, location, usage, and other factors).

~~~
bro45
Permanent goods cost more, so there will be less money for travel and food. If
your point is that in the long run permanent goods cost less and people will
have more disposable income, then I can't agree with that. Who's going to pay
that income? Companies that no longer have money?

Asking people to do something for the greater good won't lead you anywhere.
People are driven by greed that capitalism wisely directs into something
productive. This powerful stream of greed won't disappear anywhere, but it's
possible to redirect it somewhere else.

------
paulsutter
Developing nations can follow-suit, by outsourcing their own pollution
intensive activities to ... developing countries?

> rich countries have figured out how to grow with lighter environmental
> impacts—and developing nations can follow suit

------
avip
How does that reconcile with the actual (admittedly outdated) facts?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions)

~~~
lozenge
He is looking at carbon efficiency - emissions divided by GDP. On top of that,
he's looking at the change in efficiency rather than the actual efficiency,
thus he can boast that the US is increasingly efficient, instead of noting it
is already very inefficient.

Of course, the planet is based on physics and doesn't understand GDP, so this
is all in a wider sense irrelevant.

~~~
marmaduke
> the planet is based on physics and doesn't understand GDP, so this is all in
> a wider sense irrelevant

Per

[https://xkcd.com/435/](https://xkcd.com/435/)

economics (GDP) would be to the far left (or between sociology and math if
we're on S^1), so if efficiency became a part of the exchange rate or tax on
goods, it would become immediately understandable by planet.

I like BTW, the suggestion that the planet's understanding things. I can
imagine she feels rather itchy these days.

------
chunsj
Ignoring all the cost reaching to current state. Isn't this what we call fake
news?

~~~
zaro
Maybe propaganda is a beer name, as this is not really news just a twisted
storyt that serves certain interests.

------
wazoox
This is all fine and reassuring and soothing, but the fact is that we need to
entirely decorrelate economic output from resource usage, and that just
doesn't happen, nor is there any way to make it happen, even in theory. This
sounds for me like a call to wishful thinking, something like "we can go on
like we always did, we won't crash and collapse but will find a way out".

Basically, a propaganda piece for neoliberal capitalism which is driving us
into the ground fast. Borderline criminal, maybe.

------
dafty4
Assertion pretty obvious, non? (Of course a knowledge-based economy is going
to pollute less than an industrial- and/or resource-driven one.)

Then the first line of the author's thesis (more capitalism needed) doesn't
follow from the premise:

As China and Sweden demonstrate, advanced economies need not necessarily be
strictly capitalist.

------
algaeontoast
I think another attribute of this is education and being aware that there is
slightly more to life than just the pursuit of money. Sure, people with means
fall for this all the time, but I think poor people also commonly enter the
same trap. Note that a pursuit of saving face and appearing rich is entirely
different than the pursuit of wealth - but a pursuit of money could take
either path.

For instance, understanding why burning down a rain-forest to make $100 might
not be worthwhile, akin to uber drivers endangering drivers and pedestrians to
make $15.

Sometimes developed western countries seem to have sympathy for people who are
willing to deforest African nations (whom are also usually helpless to act
against these transgressions) and poach endangered animals (an obvious heinous
act) and oddly sometimes progressives will state that it's less-bad because
they're poor / uneducated...

~~~
esotericn
I'd argue that this is a huge issue in the Western world that we could
theoretically solve, though how it would happen practically I'm not sure.

Stable homes for all, reduce and/or eliminate the worst forms of advertising.

With some luck you then have a relatively happy populace, content to spend
time with their family and on leisure etc without wanting to get big 4x4s or
jet around the world or whatever. Kill off the rat race.

Quite incompatible with our current economy though...

~~~
algaeontoast
I don't necessarily have a problem with people being motivated and as a result
of their efforts making money - moreso that most people seem to be motivated
just to save face and "show" others how rich they are (mostly a media driven
idea). I think these kinds of narratives harm poor people more since they are
inclined to make horrible financial choices to be like these "rich" people,
who in reality are probably in nearly just as much debt as actual poor people.

I think the most interesting thought experiment here is when you consider
extremist progressives who want to "kill the rich and elite" \- in reality if
this actually did play out I think they'd just end up killing people who are
most evidently "rich" but not actually withholding wealth from the poor. In
essence, they'd be killing all the self-obsessed and narcissistic
consumerists. Anyone who was actually rich or still in control of banking
infrastructure would be smart enough to not be showy. (yes, I understand this
is a pretty extreme tangent)

All in all, I do think the rat race is empowering to people who are able to
understand what is really valuable to them.

------
cma
Now do it in consumption growth adjusted for marginal utility of the growth.

------
midnitewarrior
Modern, rich countries externalize their polution-causing activities to
developing nations.

------
jt2190
> The book... says there are four main forces... that enable decoupling in
> mature economies:

> * the efficiencies driven by capitalism

> * technological progress that has allowed us to “dematerialize” our
> consumption (by, for instance, cramming atlases, compasses, calculators,
> recorders, cameras, stereos, and other gadgets into a single device in our
> pocket)

> * public awareness of environmental damage

> * governments that respond to those concerns by putting regulations in place
> to reduce those harms

> So, McAfee argues, what we need to address climate change and prevent other
> environmental catastrophes, while maintaining modern living standards for
> billions of people, is … even more of each of these [four forces], working
> in concert.

~~~
jt2190
There currently seems to be a big hole in this approach, which is that rich
jurisdictions need to be aligned with poorer ones to work in concert toward
these goals, otherwise rich jurisdictions can just “pretend” they’re meeting
goals when they’re just moving them to poor jurisdictions.

------
DoreenMichele
It's long been known that businesses that produce a lot of waste have lower
profits. This is a large part of why businesses try to combat _fraud, waste
and abuse_ : For their financial health.

[http://archive.knoxnews.com/business/companies-finding-
less-...](http://archive.knoxnews.com/business/companies-finding-less-waste-
means-more-profit-ep-403017472-357515301.html/)

I guess it's nice to see this well-known fact applied at a broader level. I
haven't seen that before.

But it also makes me feel a bit like "We're dummies, no?" What pretty much
everyone knows to be true at the micro level shouldn't be some kind of big
news at the macro level, yet it is because everyone thinks capitalism is
ruining the planet.

------
JoshCalbet
Because rich countries brings their products from somewhere else, they don't
have to produce them, they don't have to deal with the environmental impact of
producing them.

~~~
lozenge
This is true. China's environmental impact is 22% lower if you exclude their
exports, and many countries in Europe would have 30% higher impact if you
include their imports.

Figures from the abstract - somewhat out of date but true to a lesser extent
today -
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851800/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851800/)

