Cordell responds to Middleton responding to Cordell. As a central player in the Conserver Society concept developed by the Science Council (20 years ago where I was a Science Advisor at the time) of course I agree with your comments. But going with infant mortality, caloric intake, access to universal educaiton, health care , public libraries, etc I think it is these indicators that are worth harmonising up to. Bringing standards of living down to (choose your country) will not solve issues related to sustainable development. Bringing misery to the 'developed' countries will not bring the desired outcome. We need to have a host of changes across a broad front including energy, consumersim, well, you know what I mean. I don't think that displacing Canadian workers and importing goods or services from areas of the world that employ children and/or prison labour in work and environmental conditions that are just miserable really solves their problem, the issues of development and while it allows Canadian consumers to buy goods at low prices, it is leading-- slowly but surely-- to an outcome characterized by the creation of a Canadian made two tier society , etc. etc. Arthur Cordell D. Middleton responds to Cordell (below) How do we define higher or lower standards of development? Does upwards harmonization equal access to a consumer society that is inherently unsustainable? Is a simpler life style of lesser quality? The present rate of resource consumption that supports developed countries is totally unsustainable from an environmental perspective. (see Our Ecological Footprint). It is not sustainable to raise the whole world to our Canadian standard of living. I find it is an interesting paradox to support the move of work, access to income and development of markets to less developed countries such as those in Central and South America and at the same time see the loss of jobs in Canada occur. It is fortunate for some and unfortunate for others. Our definitions of lifestyle and quality of life needs to be redefined. Deborah Middleton MES Faculty of Environmental Studies York University Arthur Cordell Wrote: >In a globalized world there will be harmonization >(of wages, working conditions, environment, etc.), do we want to try to >achieve upward harmonization or do we allow a drift to lower standards. >There will be harmonization: At what level. I (as you can gather) would >like to have the world harmonize upward to what we call development and >as much as possible not reach harmonization by having the presently >developed give up the hard won gains of development.
