Wirt, I agree that poverty is an important factor, but you seem to overlook equally important factors.
1. Poverty-creation in the "third world" has been assisted and enforced by centuries of colonization and globalization. We, the globalizers, frequently install and/or defend autocratic leaders because they serve our interests better - contrary to the notion that autocracy is always home-grown. We often quash democratic movements and depose democratically elected leaders in favor of dictators. The examples are legion (Iran, Chile, Panama, Haiti, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Indonesia, Venezuela (recently attempted coup)) - in fact, you can hardly name a "backward, Third World" dictatorship in the last century that wasn't installed and/or protected and/or assisted in some way by the Western powers, particularly the US. Far from protecting and spreading democracy, global capitalism prefers autocrats that it can control. 2. As a result of the above, much of the poverty and environmental destruction in poor countries is traceable to the global capitalism of developed countries. Our influence (environmental, economic, political, etc.) extends much further than most poor countries'. In a global ecosystem of energy and material flows, we draw resources to ourselves from all over the world, and export much pollution to these same places, or to the planet generally. 3. So your environmental footprint and mine are extended across oceans to faraway places that produce our goods, and recieve our exported pollution. Rather than having one big footprint, I am like a centipede, with my environmental weight distributed over lots of small points scattered all over the place. 4. So poor places are trampled by the large, dispersed impacts of people in rich countries, plus the smaller but concentrated impacts of the local poor. The destruction of Haiti may indeed show that poor populations have greater impact on their LOCAL environment. But Haiti's history also shows that, while autocratic/abusive governments may lead to local devastation, those governments are often allowed to flourish because of their backing by rich countries in suppressing local democratic movements. Your "what if" notion of a wealthier Haiti may be correct, but it is irrelevant as long as rich countries prevent such a Haiti from emerging. But my larger argument is the present system cannot allow the enrichment of rich AND poor countries simultaneously - according to our present notions of enrichment. Joe Gathman __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
