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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

It brings this up in the article, but I have a very difficult time believing this isn't just because rich countries have shifted manufacturing and mining to poor countries. Look at recycling. We all thought we were so environmentally aware by recycling, but turns out so much "recycling" was just "ship to poor countries to deal with the fallout".

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Where do you draw the line?

How about Thailand or Malaysia (as an example)? They are both fairly developed and hoping to avoid middle income trap and become developed countries within few years. In both countries disregard for enviroment and citizens health is just sad. Toxic haze, toxic water, pollution, trash.

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

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/1643388/chiang-...

https://www.chiangraitimes.com/thailand-monks-adorn-robes-ma...

https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2019/08/06...

https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/13/two-incid...

https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2019/07/19/incinerat...

>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?

I don't think dumping is really the right word here. As it says in the article, importers are illegally accepting the waste and making a good chunk of money from it. The private companies who are disposing of waste from Western countries are happy to pay these guys to get rid of it. Still they could try to check what happens to the waste, rather than just turning a blind eye. But when the mafia can dump nuclear waste in your own back yard, I guess it's hard to see what happens on the other side of the world to some plastic bottles...

https://gizmodo.com/the-mob-is-secretly-dumping-nuclear-wast...

This is correct, the vague measure of how many people and how much pollution does a country produce is not very good. It's really about how much a country consumes and the resulting worldwide pollution.

Interestingly, there's currently a big debate in the UK about including imported goods in its carbon statistics and for its zero-carbon goals.

This is one of the many intersections between capitalism and imperialism. Marx said that capitalism would destroy itself when the rate of profit declined as it extracted too much from the working class. However, all the bourgeoisie economists claim Marx was wrong despite this simple and compelling model. After all, the rate of profit didn't decline. How did they (the capitalists) do it?

They did it by expanding markets constantly, invading third world countries to "liberate" their labor forces, synthesizing want via advertising, and many other means.

Now that we are in a globalized economy, we are running out of new markets and cash is just sloshing around. The capitalist class has slashed away as best they can at the welfare state, reducing the possibility of radical redistribution that could right the ship. Maybe now Marx's prediction will have a chance to come true.

And literally export all their garbage to China.

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

This practice has just been outlawed in Australia, which is great news. I’d willingly pay more for recycling to be done here.

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.

This happened before poor countries had any manufacturing.

Wasn’t rich countries also forcefully deprived the wealth of the developing countries before the inception the great development?

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