Posted 7:09 AM by steve

According to Obama, "There is no contradiction between environmentally sustainable growth and robust economic growth".

Sounds good, right? Too good, right?

He might have a chance of someone believing him if, throughout recorded history, he could point to a single example of a country that grew its economy in a 'environmentally sustainable' way.

But he can't.

Being 'nice' to the environment invariably results in less economic growth than if one wasn't interested in being nice... for the simple reason that playing nice requires resources that can't be used to generate further economic growth. Money spent on cleaning waste water is money that can't be used to pump more oil out of the ground. Money spent on installing air filters on a factory is money that can't be spent producing more of whatever the factory produces.

Being 'nice' to the environment is something that people may choose to do if/when they feel the costs of doing so (easy to quantify) are less than the benefits of doing so (much harder, if not impossible, to quantify... but for developing countries, and especially in times of economic turmoil, the choice between additional production and an intangible environmental benefit, the choice is pretty easy.

And on a somewhat related note, it was allegedly Bush's arrogance that led other countries to go their own way... so how does Obama explain away the refusal of developing countries to jump on the global warming scare bandwagon?