

The Lancet should be promoting public health not climate alarmism - tomhoward
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/doctors-obligation-to-patient-before-planet/story-e6frg6zo-1225976795292

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A1kmm
> it would be equally valid to argue for as many coal-fired > power plants to
> be built in Africa, India and China as is > humanly possible

The author conveniently omits to mention where the coal will come from, and
what will happen when it runs out.

The _real_ elephant in the room when it comes to trade, that free-trade
zealots like the Copenhagen "Consensus" never address, is that the developed
world can only sustain the current level of living conditions by outsourcing
labour and environmental damage. If the current developing countries are going
to reach the living standards of developed countries, who are they going to
outsource their cheap labour and environmental damage to?

It is likely someone is going to post a comment lecturing me about how the
economy isn't zero-sum. The economy isn't zero-sum, but zero-sum is one
extreme, with each individuals available raw resources being independent at
the other extreme. For available raw resources to be independent, there would
need to be infinite land, water, and fossil fuels close to every individual,
with no possibility of environmental damage. In reality, the situation is
somewhere between the two extremes - the more one individual consumes in
absolute terms, the less there is available to others, but it is still
possible to grow the pie slightly through innovation. Making developing
countries more developed might grow the pie very slightly, but the only way
people in those countries will have a developed world standard of living is by
giving others now or in the future less in absolute terms. Less inequality is
not a bad thing, but it doesn't justify giving ourselves more now at the
expense of future generations.

