A new book asserts that rich countries grow with lighter environmental impacts

> What's interesting is how it's been found near cities and Agriculture but also in remote areas. I'm curious how much of a role the waste treatment centers have played which was noted as a potential source.

There are generally two main sources. 1. agricultural runoff related to fertilizers. 2. Urban sewage, because birth control products get flushed down toilets and the wastewater treatment plants don't even try to filter for hormones (it's not part of the Clean Water Act). And even if they tried, the methods to do so are nascent (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/06/19/4153363...).

> I also now understand what Alex Jones meant by "gay fish" in one of his popular rants he was mocked for.

Yes, he got unfair criticism for calling attention to this -- it is actually a huge environmental problem that needs more public awareness. The ecological impacts are huge, and yes because the water treatment plants don't filter, you might be drinking similar concentrations through tap water. (edit: to be clear, the concentrations that harm fish are nowhere near enough to cause the same level of harm in humans, so no you will not turn gay from drinking tap water)

He's still a nutcase con man though, IMO. Mixing in a few grains of truth makes the poisonous ideas go down smoother.

Scott Alexander wrote a post [1] about how this was a serious ecological concern, but because Alex Jones picked it up (and augmented it with some wacky government-conspiracy stuff) it became impossible to raise awareness for it without sounding like a nut.

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/04/respectability-cascade...

>Where do you draw the line?

You don't. You account for those externalities all the way (until they become small enough so that further breakdown does not matter).

>When is the moment that a country decides that it is rich enough and it is time to clean its act?

If by cleaning you mean "moving it somewhere else" then it doesn't matter.

> In both countries disregard for enviroment and citizens health is just sad. Toxic haze, toxic water, pollution, trash.

That was trash that was illegally dumped there by UK, Australia, and other Western countries, right after China stopped accepting Western trash. https://asklegal.my/p/waste-dumping-malaysia-canada-pollutio...

You use a strong sentence "disregard for environment". What facts lead you say that? Wouldn't the behavior of the Western countries shipping trash over to poorer countries indicate a much stronger disregard for the environment? Or are you implying the environment/nature can be split into one that is local to Western countries and another that is present in developing/poorer countries?

And sewage to Alabama. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/04/2...

I believe the post your were responding too just used recycling as an example.

A different example: Australia could have a tech industry that didn't pollute (assuming the power weren't coming from brown coal :-( ). But all the hardware designed in AUS could be built in a highly polluting way in China. That would be essentially exporting the pollution.

I don't know the fix, just pointing out the topic at hand. Australia's record on pollution is horrific, especially when you consider how little of our continent is actually habitable.

> The guy who doesn't have enough money for rent? He's not buying the expensive free range eggs.

I suppose you were just providing a random example, but if you're curious the production of free-range eggs almost certainly pollutes more carbon than caged eggs [1] while being less ethically sound (assuming that was the consideration for cage-free), environmentally responsible, and typically more expensive than plant alternatives.

[1] https://www.smh.com.au/national/free-range-hens-boost-carbon...

Except that's a false dichotomy. The hypothetical guy you're talking about is almost certainly the one whose family is gonna be negatively affected the most by climate change.

And this isn't in some hypothetical future. It's already happening.

Not necessarily- a poor country with high biodiversity or other natural resources are a known phenomenon [0]. Also, another known issue is that the most polluted rivers are often from developing countries, partially because developed countries are sending their trash there.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

The greatest polluter is the economy where the only profitable business model is planned depreciation to make people buy new stuff. Nobody makes durable razors because it's a financial suicide. Nobody makes reliable cars, laptops, toothbrushes. People don't have a choice but to keep replacing things that break. Manufacturing these things wastes oil, coal and pollutes the environment. The businesses don't care because disposing the junk is not their problem. Change rules to make businesses accountable for stuff they sell: the recycling facility needs to do something with a mountain of broken fridges? Let it send an invoice to manufacturer. Many companies will go bankrupt. We'll see how reliable things replace the junk. The economy will slow down because people won't need to spend so much. There won't be much progress either if you drive the grandfathered car: no money for R&D, so engineers become repairmen. No more demand for STEM because the market for making new things is tiny. The big tech will collapse because its paid by ads and there will be nothing to advertise. Stagnation, deflation, unemployment, good stamps. As you see, the solution exists and it's called stagnation. TBH, I'm not sure if it's bad because currently the world is rapidly consolidating 99% of resources in the 1% people s hands (and make no mistake, they will survive any global warming that may come). P.S. Single family houses aren't the problem. They actually store CO2 in the form of wood, which is an easily replaceble resource. If houses were built from aluminium, I'd agree with you, but they are made from wood in the US.

That's both untrue and ethically disgusting, by pretending that some poor people toiling in some remote countries, using no pesticide and no machinery, eating mostly rice or yam, harm the planet more than MIT professors flying around the world from conference to conference with their macbooks under their arm. This is so wrong...

> the planet is based on physics and doesn't understand GDP, so this is all in a wider sense irrelevant

Per

https://xkcd.com/435/

economics (GDP) would be to the far left (or between sociology and math if we're on S^1), so if efficiency became a part of the exchange rate or tax on goods, it would become immediately understandable by planet.

I like BTW, the suggestion that the planet's understanding things. I can imagine she feels rather itchy these days.

Not only incompatible with the economy. What you describe is likely to require an authoritarian system.

I don't necessarily have a problem with people being motivated and as a result of their efforts making money - moreso that most people seem to be motivated just to save face and "show" others how rich they are (mostly a media driven idea). I think these kinds of narratives harm poor people more since they are inclined to make horrible financial choices to be like these "rich" people, who in reality are probably in nearly just as much debt as actual poor people.

I think the most interesting thought experiment here is when you consider extremist progressives who want to "kill the rich and elite" - in reality if this actually did play out I think they'd just end up killing people who are most evidently "rich" but not actually withholding wealth from the poor. In essence, they'd be killing all the self-obsessed and narcissistic consumerists. Anyone who was actually rich or still in control of banking infrastructure would be smart enough to not be showy. (yes, I understand this is a pretty extreme tangent)

All in all, I do think the rat race is empowering to people who are able to understand what is really valuable to them.