newsroom

TODAY Monday 30 March 1998 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Environmentalism for Grown-Ups

Thank God for people like Hilary French at Worldwatch; her authoritative grasp of the issues that matter almost compensates for the rest of us who prefer to gloss over the hard stuff.

The latest service rendered by Ms. French is a 52-page monograph entitled "Investing in the Future: Harnessing Capital Flows for Environmentally Sustainable Development." In it she makes an irrefutable point. Private money dwarfs public money these days. Those of us who worry about foreign aid and the World Bank tend to overlook the fact that the value of corporate investments in the developing world outstrips those of government investments by about seven to one. This is a relatively new development, French points out: as recently as 1990 the ratio was one to one.

Since then, budgetary strains and political pressures in the rich countries contributed to a 25% decline in the transfer of public assets to poor countries. But private investment took off, particularly for opportunities in China, Brazil, Mexico, and the East Asian tigers. It can be argued reasonably that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and other public-funded institutions wield influence greater than their raw percentages of national loan portfolios. Still, the big battalions are commanded by private forces.

The environmental dimensions of all this can be glimpsed quickly by looking at the kinds of projects funded by all the new private money, including power plants (lots of them), automobile factories (ditto), and chemical and metallurgical facilities. Talk about crucial sectors. French notes that there are ecological downsides and upsides to those investments: upside if the new facilities (and the products they produce) can "leapfrog" forward to energy-efficient, non-toxic designs and processes; downside if they muck things up.

That the anti-environmentalists in Congress are stirring up a xenophobic fuss about the Kyoto agreement might be perversely beneficial if it forces us to think harder about what's being undertaken in the new southern version of the Industrial Revolution. The Kyoto opponents are right: US ecological virtue is wasted if it's outweighed tenfold by developments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Ironically, perhaps, it looks as if the most important ecological contribution that America can make to the world right now is to apply its formidable powers of invention and optimism to the tasks of defanging technology and helping others make a buck in the process.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE

For those of you who want to brush against the nitty-gritty of contemporary manufacturing, check out our High Fives page on Materials, researched and maintained by John Young, one of the many talented Worldwatch alumni lending their talents to Liberty Tree.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

3/27: Kyoto? Nice Town. Oh, You Mean the Treaty!!
3/26: Hungary
3/25: Solidarity With Counterfeiters
3/24: A Fair Price for Water
3/23: Unattractive Progress on Transportation
3/20: The Thrill of Demography
3/19: About This Global Economy Business...
3/18: Toilet Heresy
3/17: St Patrick and Your Asteroid Insurance
3/16: Rebellion in Tennessee
3/13: Good News from the Senate
3/12: Children and Cancer
3/11: Save Our Beaches!
3/10: Die Gruenen und der SDP
3/9: In Search for the Holy Grail of the Forests
3/6: My Doom, Your Gloom
3/5: The Great D. P. Moynihan
3/4: "An Earthquake in Insurance"
3/3: Salmon Farming
3/2: Our Friends the Duck Killers
2/27: Trust El Nino
2/26: That Darn Triple-A
2/25: Cutting a Deal on Endangered Species
2/24: Fire? Again?
2/23: Garbage
2/20: Population Rebellion in the Sierra Club
2/19: The Trouble With Cattle

To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.

 

search | Archives | free newsletter | home

Let us know what you think: listen@libtree.org