bob, do you have any persons you view as "successful"? why? | F.A.C.T.S.: Forum for Active Critical Thinking & Skepticism

bob, do you have any persons you view as "successful"? why? Mar 13, 2014 18:58:50 GMT -5

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Post by rmarks1 on Mar 13, 2014 18:58:50 GMT -5

Mar 13, 2014 16:40:14 GMT -5 @mcans said:

Mar 13, 2014 15:38:16 GMT -5 rmarks1 said:

Do you have any evidence for that claim? The Soviet Union's pollution record was the worst in the world at the time. And there were no greedy capitalists to blame. How do you suppose that happened?

Bob

It's pretty bad even by Soviet standards:
"China’s impressive economic growth has come at a high cost: according to estimates by the World Bank and China’s Environmental Protection Administration (World Bank 2007), the environmental fallout from China’s growth miracle may cost the economy as much as 5.8 percent of GDP per year. China’s environmental pollution has been making headlines for some time now: the PRC is home to some of the most badly polluted cities in the world; about half of the country’s sweet water reserves are toxic from contaminants, and the air quality in many areas is threatening the health of China’s citizens. In some areas, the situation is so dire that laundry hung out in the open will reportedly turn black before it dries. China’s capital city Beijing is regularly smothered in smog – in early 2013, the air pollution there reached levels 30 times higher than what the World Health Organization considers to be safe."

www.politicseastasia.com/studying/chinas-environmental-pollution/

Well at least we now know that the pollution is not the cause of China's economic miracle sine it "may cost the economy as much as 5.8 percent of GDP per year." But while their pollution is pretty bad, that doesn't mean it is worse than the pollution in the old Soviet Union, which was Teri's original claim.

They didn't have a great track record under Mao either, but they simply weren't industrialized enough for that to make much of an influence. It's with the industrialization fuelled by Western capital that the problems became obvious on a national scale.

Exactly! There was still pollution and environmental damage without any "greedy corporations." Socialist bureaucrats only care about meeting the quota that is set by the central government. They couldn't care less about the environment or about making people sick. It's the duty of individuals to die if necessary to build the socialist state.

Bob

bob, do you have any persons you view as "successful"? why? Mar 13, 2014 19:11:13 GMT -5

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Post by rmarks1 on Mar 13, 2014 19:11:13 GMT -5

Mar 13, 2014 18:45:00 GMT -5 teri said:

"Companies do not relocate because of lax environmental laws."

Whaaaaat? Ever heard of "pollution havens"?

these corporations want to lower production costs. this includes low wages AND minimal responsibility for the externalities of that production.

google it, bob. the internet is full of references to the allure of lax environmental regs for manufacturing.

I did Google it, and the concept is still not proven. It's still a hypothesis. In fact, one of the people who objects to it is the liberal economist Paul Krugman!

A final area of controversy is whether the Pollution Haven Hypothesis has empirical support. For example, studies have found statistically significant evidence that countries with poor air quality do have higher net factor exports of coal, but the magnitude of the impact is small relative to other variables.[6] Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning economist, is skeptical as to whether pollution havens have empirical support in economic theory, as he writes, "At this point it's hard to come up with major examples of industries in which the pollution haven phenomenon, to the extent that it occurs, leads to international negative externalities. This does not, however, say that such examples cannot arise in the future."[7]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_haven_hypothesis#Areas_of_controversy

and right now
China is the top polluter nation in the world, followed by the US.

Well at least they are now seeing the error of their ways and are now taking action against polluters. I would say that the death penalty qualifies as action.

China has introduced “harsher punishments” for breaking the nation’s environmental protection laws: reckless violators of pollution standards in the world’s biggest and fastest-growing economy now face execution.

A new judicial interpretation taking effect on Wednesday has tightened Chinese “lax and superficial” enforcement of environmental protection laws, Xinhua reported citing a government statement.

The government is set to introduce a “precise criteria for convictions and sentencing” while the “judicial explanation provides a powerful legal weapon.” Law enforcement should take environmental regulations seriously and “all force should be mobilized to uncover law-breaking clues of environmental pollution in a timely way,” the statement reads.

rt.com/news/china-execution-environmental-offenders-967/

Bob