“…try naming a U.S. city whose air quality is even remotely as bad as Beijing’s, or an American river as polluted as the Han: You can’t. America, the richer and more industrialized country, is also by far the cleaner one.
People who live in Third-World countries—like Mexico, where I grew up—tend to understand this, even if First-World environmentalists do not. People who live in oppressive Third World countries, like China, also understand that it isn’t just greater wealth that leads to a better environment, but greater freedom, too.” [WSJ]
So then, according to Bret Stephens, rational climate change policy would focus not on emission-capping third world nations (incensing their people and slowing their development) – but in fact on the opposite: trying to push those countries along the development industrialization curve as fast as possible.
I agree with the spirit of his point, but would argue that there is a middle ground to be found. While America may be clean and green today (tip: its not), the past century has seen its share of environmental atrocities, premature deaths from air pollution, etc. Many of those disasters – personal and environmental – could have been avoided without appreciably slowing the pace of development had the people of the time had access the technologies and knowledge that exists today.
It strikes me then that climate change policy should focus on building a green incentive framework that speeds development in the right directions – not a ham-fisted cap system that pitches east against west in the minds of the poor, and not the free-for-all regulatory vacuum that America has spent the last 50 years patching itself up from.
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