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A2: Globalization Hurts Environment



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A2: Globalization Hurts Environment




Economic evaluation is key to preservation of the environment.


Thompson 03 – Stanford natural resources professor [Barton, “What Good is Economics”, 27 Environs Envtl. L. & Pol'y J. 175, p. 187-90

Even the environmental moralist who eschews any normative use of economics may find economics valuable for other purposes. Indeed, economics is indispensable in diagnosing why society currently does not achieve the level of environmental protection desired by the moralist. Those who turn their backs on economics and rely instead on ethical  [*187]  intuition to diagnose environmental problems are likely to find themselves doomed to failure. Economic theory suggests that flaws in economic markets and institutions are often the cause of environmental problems. Three concepts of market failure have proven particularly robust in analyzing environmental problems. The first is the "tragedy of the commons." n28 If a resource is open and free for multiple parties to use, the parties will tend to over-utilize the resource, even to the point of its destruction. Economists and others have used the tragedy of the commons to explain such environmental problems as over-fishing, the over-drafting of groundwater aquifers, the early and inept exhaustion of oil fields, and high levels of population growth. The second, more general concept (of which the tragedy of the commons actually is a specialized instance) is the "negative externality." n30 When parties do not bear the full cost to society of environmental harms that they cause, they tend to under-invest in the elimination or correction of the harm. Externalities help explain why factories pollute, why landowners destroy ecologically valuable wetlands or other forms of habitat, and why current generations consume high levels of exhaustible resources. The final concept is the problem of "collective action." If political or market actions will benefit a large group of individuals and it is impossible to exclude anyone from enjoying the benefits, each individual will have an incentive to "free ride" on the actions of others rather than acting themselves, reducing the possibility that anything will get done. This explains why the private market does not provide us with more wildlife refuges or aesthetic open space. Although these economic explanations for environmental problems are not universal truths, accurate in all settings, they do enjoy a robust  applicability. Experimenters, for example, have found that subjects in a wide array of countries succumb to the tragedy of the commons. Smaller groups sometimes have been able to overcome the tragedy of the commons and govern a resource in collective wisdom. Yet this exception appears to be the result of institutional characteristics peculiar to the group and resource that make it easier to devise a local and informal regulatory system rather than the result of cultural differences that undermine the economic precepts of the tragedy of the commons. These economic explanations point to a vastly different approach to solving environmental problems than a focus on environmental ethics alone would suggest. To environmental moralists, the difficulty is that the population does not understand the ethical importance of protecting the environment. Although governmental regulation might be necessary in the short run to force people to do what they do not yet appreciate is proper, the long run answers are education and moral change. A principal means of enlightening the citizenry is engaging them in a discussion of environmental goals. Economic analysis, by contrast, suggests that the problem lies in our economic institutions. The solution under economic analysis is to give those who might harm the environment the incentive to avoid the harm through the imposition of taxes or regulatory fines or the awarding of environmentally beneficial subsidies. The few studies that have tried to test the relative importance of environmental precepts and of economics in predicting environmentally relevant behavior suggest that economics trumps ethics. In one 1992 experiment designed to test whether subjects would yield to the tragedy of the commons in a simulated fisheries common, the researchers looked  to see whether the environmental attitudes of individual subjects made any difference in the subjects' behavior. The researchers measured subjects' environmental beliefs through various means. They administered questionnaires designed to elicit environmental beliefs; they asked the subjects how they would behave in various hypothetical scenarios (e.g., if someone asked them to volunteer to pick up litter on the weekend); they even tried to see how the subjects would react to real requests for environmental help (e.g., by asking them to participate in a Saturday recycling campaign). No matter how the researchers tried to measure the environmental attitudes of the subjects, attitude failed to provide a statistically significant explanation for participants' behavior in the fishing commons. Those who appeared to have strong environmental beliefs behaved just as tragically as those who did not when fighting for the limited stock of fish. In another study, researchers examined domestic consumers of high amounts of electricity in Perth, Australia. After administering a survey to determine whether the consumers believed they had a personal and ethical duty to conserve energy, the researchers tried various methods for changing the behavior of those who reported that people have a conservation obligation. Informing these individuals of their high electricity usage and even supplying them with conservation tips did not make a statistically significant difference in their energy use. The only thing that led these individuals to reduce their electricity consumption was a letter reminding them of the earlier survey in which they had espoused a conservation duty and emphasizing the inconsistency of that view with their high electricity usage. In response to this letter, the subjects reduced their energy use. Apparently shame can be a valuable catalyst in converting ethical beliefs into action. But the effect may be short lived. Within two weeks, the Perth subjects' energy use had risen back to its earlier levels. Ethical beliefs, in short, frequently fall victim to personal convenience or cost considerations. Ethical views sometimes can make a difference in how people behave. Examples include the role that ethics has played in encouraging people to recycle or to eat dolphin-free tuna. But the  personal cost, if any, of recycling or of eating dolphin-free tuna is exceptionally small. For most of the environmental dilemmas that face the nation and the world today, the economic cost of changing behavior is far more significant. And where costs are high, economics appears to trump most peoples' environmental views. Even if ethics played a more powerful role, we do not know for certain how to create or strengthen environmental norms. n38 In contrast, we do know how to change economic incentives. Although environmental moralists should continue trying to promote environmental ethics, economic analysis currently provides the strongest tool for diagnosing and thus helping to resolve environmental problems. The environmental moralist who ignores this tool in trying to improve the environment is doomed to frustration.

Market forces are key to sustaining the environment.


Wager 11 – EDF economist [Gernot, But Will the Planet Notice? How Smart Economics Can Save the World, pg 11-2]

The fundamental forces guiding the behavior of billions are much larger than any one of us. It's about changing our system, creating a new business as usual. And to do that we need to think about what makes our system run. In the end, it comes down to markets, and the rules of the game that govern what we chase and how we chase it. Scientists can tell us how bad it will get. Activists can make us pay attention to the ensuing instabilities and make politicians take note. When the task comes to formulating policy, only economists can help guide us out of this morass and save the planet. In an earlier time with simpler problems, environmentalists took direct action against the market's brutal forces by erecting roadblocks or chaining themselves to trees. That works if the opposing force is a lumberjack with a chain saw. It might even work for an entire industry when the task is to ban a particular chemical or scrub a pollutant out of smokestacks. But that model breaks down when the opposing force is ourselves: each and every one of us demanding that the globalized market provide us with cheaper and better food, clothes, and vacations. There is no blocking the full, collective desires of the billions who are now part of the market economy and the billions more who want to—and ought to—be part of it. The only solution is to guide all-powerful market forces in the right direction and create incentives for each of us to make choices that work for all of us. The guideposts we have today for market forces evolved helter- skelter from a historical process that gave almost no weight to the survival of the planet, largely because the survival of the planet was not at stake. Now it is. Since we can't live without market forces, we need to guide them to help us keep the human adventure going in workable ways, rather than continue on the present path right off the edge of a cliff.

Globalization doesn’t hurt the environment



Bernauer et al. 10 – Thomas: is a professor of political science at ETH Zurich; Ms. Anna Kalbhenn: PhD candidate at the Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS), Zurich; Vally Koubi: a senior fellow at the Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich; Gabriele Ruoff: postdoctoral researcher in the “International Political Economy” group of Thomas Bernauer at the Center for Comparative and International Studies [“Climate Change, Economic Growth, and Conflict” climsec.prio.no/papers/Climate_Conflict_BKKR_Trondheim_2010.pdf]

Other scholars, commonly referred to as cornucopians or resource optimists, do not share this pessimistic view. They acknowledge that environmental degradation may negatively affect human wellbeing. But they argue that humans can adapt to resource scarcity by using market mechanisms (pricing), technological innovation, and other means (Lomborg 2001; Simon 1998). Simon (1998) for instance notes that, although population growth can lead to shortages or increased economic burdens in the short run, the ability of society to respond to such circumstances by improvements in technology and efficiency usually outstrips the constraints imposed by an increasing population. The neo-Malthusian argument has also been criticized for being overly complex and deterministic, and for ignoring important economic and socio-political factors (e.g. Gleditsch 1998; de Soysa 2002a,b; Barnett and Adger 2007; Salehyan 2008). Critics have argued that scarcity of renewable resources is just one of the factors in the overall relationship between climate change and conflict. Buhaug et al. (2008:20) note that “climate change may increase the risk of armed conflict only under certain conditions and in interaction with several socio-political factors”. They reject the idea that climate change has a direct effect on the likelihood of conflict and propose several causal pathways through which economic and political instability, social fragmentation, and migration could increase the probability of climate change leading to armed conflict. Qualitative case studies (e.g. Baechler et al. 1996) provide some, albeit anecdotal evidence that climate change induced environmental degradation (such as water scarcity, soil degradation, or deforestation) has contributed to conflict in some parts of the world (e.g. the Sahel region). But it remains unclear to what extent these case specific findings can be generalized. Large-N studies have, so far, not been able to provide conclusive evidence. One part of this variance in empirical evidence is certainly due to the use of different measures of climate change and environmental degradation, data problems, and different sample sizes and time periods. Another part, we submit, is due to the fact that past research has focused on identification of a direct link between climatic conditions and conflict. Conditional effects that stem from key factors such as economic development and the political system characteristics may thus have been overlooked.


All environmental factors getting better.


Lomberg 10 – Ph.D in pol science [“Bjorn Earth Day: Smile, don't shudder; Ignore doomsday environmentalists. Things aren't so bad. And if rich countries would worry about the right things, all the better”. USA Today.]

Given all the talk of impending catastrophe, this may come as a surprise, but as we approach the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day, people who care about the environment actually have a lot to celebrate. Of course, that's not how the organizers of Earth Day 2010 see it. In their view (to quote a recent online call to arms), "The world is in greater peril than ever." But consider this: In virtually every developed country, the air is more breathable and the water is more drinkable than it was in 1970. In most of the First World, deforestation has turned to reforestation. Moreover, the percentage of malnutrition has been reduced, and ever-more people have access to clean water and sanitation. Apocalyptic predictions from concerned environmental activists are nothing new. Until about 10 years ago, I took it for granted that these predictions were sound. Like many of us, I believed that the world was in a terrible state that was only getting worse with each passing day. My thinking changed only when, as a university lecturer, I set out with my students to disprove what I regarded at the time as the far-fetched notion that global environmental conditions were actually improving. To our surprise, the data showed us that many key environmental measures were indeed getting better.



Neoliberalism won’t cause environmental collapse.


Schweickart 09 – Loyola philosophy professor [David, “Is Sustainable Capitalism an Oxymoron?”, Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 8.2-3]

Anti-capitalist ecologists always say this. In Kovel’s (2007) words, “capital must expand without end in order to exist (p. 38).” But is this true? It would seem not to be. Individual small businesses sometimes survive for long periods of time. Marx ’s prediction that the “petty bourgeois” sector would disappear has turned out not to be true. (The tendency toward monopoly/oligopoly, which he correctly identifi ed, has been off set by the continual rise of new entrepreneurial businesses.) Capitalism itself has survived prolonged depressions—the Great One of 1929 lasted a decade. Periods of stagnation have been even more common—witness Japan throughout the 1990s. To be sure, capitalism incentivizes growth, but it is not at all clear that thwarted growth leads to death. We can point to lots of counterexamples. It is not true either that the various ecological crises we are facing will bring about “the end of the world.”4 Consider the recently-released Stern Review , commissioned by the British government, which has been applauded by environmentalists for its strong recommendation that urgent action be taken. If nothing is done, we risk “major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and economic depression of the fi rst half of the 20th century.”5 Th is is serious. Some sixty million people died in World War Two. Th e Stern Review estimates as many as two hundred million people could be permanently displaced by rising sea level and drought. But this is not “the end of the world.” Even if the effects are far worse, resulting in billions of deaths, there would still be lots of us left. If three-quarters of the present population perished, that would still leave us with 1.6 billion people—the population of the planet in 1900. I say this not to minimize the potentially horrifi c impact of relentless environmental destruction, but to caution against exaggeration. We are not talking about thermonuclear war—which could have extinguished us as a species. (It still might.) And we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that millions of people on the planet right now, caught up in savage civil wars or living beneath those US bombers currently devastating Iraq , are faced with conditions more terrible than anyone reading this article is likely to face in his or her lifetime due to environmental degradation.6 Nor will readers suff er more than most of the three billion people alive now who survive on less than $2/day.

Globalization compatible with environmental sustainability


Jeffrey Sachs, August 22, 2005, Scientific American, “Can Extreme Poverty Be Eliminated?: Globalization, Poverty, and Foreign Aid,” http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-extreme-poverty-be-el/ DOA: 1-1-15

By and large, economic development is a positive-sum process, meaning that all can partake in it without causing some to suffer. In the past 200 years, the world as a whole has achieved a massive increase in economic output rather than a shift in economic output to one region at the expense of another. To be sure, global environmental constraints are already starting to impose themselves. As today's poor countries develop, the climate, fisheries and forests are coming under increased strain. Overall global economic growth is compatible with sustainable management of the ecosystems on which all humans depend--indeed, wealth can be good for the environment--but only if public policy and technologies encourage sound practices and the necessary investments are made in environmental sustainability.



Free trade does not threaten the environment

Washington Times, October 6, 2014, “Economic Globalization Boosts Asia, bogs down US Middle Class,” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/6/economic-globalization-boosts-asia-bogs-down-us-mi/?page=all DOA: 1-2-14


Some environmental activists complain that the global trading system, as embodied in the WTO, favors free trade at the expense of environmental protection. But WTO rules place no restraints on the ability of a member government to impose any environmental regulations determined to be necessary to protect its own environment from domestically produced or imported products. Article XX of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994, the basic charter of the WTO, plainly states that members may impose trade restrictions “necessary to protect human, animal, or plant health.” The Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement of the Uruguay Round does require that such restrictions be based on sound scientific evidence—a commonsense requirement necessary to discourage the use of health and safety issues as a cover for protectionism.

If WTO members are found to be in violation of their commitments, they remain free as sovereign nations to simply ignore any adverse WTO rulings against domestic regulations that impact trade. A prominent example is the European Union’s ban on the sale of beef from cattle treated with growth hormones. The EU has repeatedly lost in the WTO, but it has no plans to lift its ban, even though it has produced no scientifically sound evidence that the banned beef poses any hazard to public health. The United States retaliated against the EU in May 1999 by imposing sanctions on $ 117 million worth of imports from Europe, but retaliation as a weapon of trade disputes existed long before the WTO.

Antitrade environmental activists complain that several decisions by the WTO have undercut U.S. environmental regulations. In the so-called Shrimp-Turtle case, the WTO ruled against a U.S. ban on shrimp from countries the United States judged were not adequately protecting sea turtles from being caught and killed in shrimp nets. In an earlier, similar case, the WTO had ruled against a U.S. ban on tuna from Mexico that the United States claims was caught through a process that endangers dolphins. Environmental critics of the WTO point to these two cases as proof of their claim.

In both these cases, however, the United States remains free to simply ignore the WTO ruling and continue enforcing the law as is. The affected nations could in theory retaliate with trade restrictions of their own if the United States refuses to comply, but that option would always exist even if the WTO did not. And in the case of the Shrimp- Turtle decision, it was not the law itself that ran afoul of WTO rules but the discriminatory way the United States went about implementing it, for example giving Latin American suppliers more time than Asian suppliers to comply with the law.

Expanding trade is not merely compatible with high standards of environmental quality but can lead directly to their improvement. As a country sees its standard of living rise through economic liberalization and trade expansion, its industry can more readily afford to control emissions and its citizens have more to spend on the “luxury good” of improved environmental quality, above what they need for subsistence. And as economic growth creates a growing, better- educated middle class, the political demand for pollution abatement rises. Today the most restrictive environmental laws are maintained in developed countries that are relatively open to trade.

This helps explain the so-called Environmental Kuznets Curve, where environmental quality in a developing nation initially deteriorates as the economy begins to industrialize but then improves after its citizens reach a certain standard of living. Research by Alan Krueger and Gene Grossman indicates that the turning point occurs at about $ 5,000 per capita: “We find no evidence that environmental quality deteriorates steadily with economic growth. Rather, for most indicators, economic growth brings an initial phase of deterioration followed by a subsequent phase of improvement.” By $ 8,000 per-capita income, the authors found, almost all the pollutant categories had begun to improve.20

The United States itself is a classic example of the benign effect of trade and growth on the environment. It has simultaneously one of the most open economies and one of the cleanest environments in the world. In the past decade, the United States has continued to open its economy further, signing the North American Free Trade Agreement and shepherding the creation of the World Trade Organization. Meanwhile, two-way trade and foreign investment continue to climb as a percentage of GDP. This liberalization of international trade and investment has been accompanied by ever-rising environmental standards. According to the President’s Council on Environmental Quality, mean ambient concentrations of both sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide in the atmosphere of the United States have dropped by nearly 40 percent since 1988. During that same period, the annual number of “bad air days” in major U.S. cities has dropped by two-thirds. The direct discharge of toxic water pollutants is down dramatically as well. Since the early 1970s, during a time of growing globalization of the U.S. economy, real spending by government and business on the environment and natural resource protection has doubled.21

Despite the rhetoric heard on the streets in Seattle, expanding global trade has not spurred a race to the bottom on environmental regulation or quality. In fact, the evidence points in the opposite direction.


Economic globalization isn’t the root cause of environmental destruction.


Bakker 9 – Proffesor of Geography at University of British Columbia [Karen. "Commentary". Environment and Planning, http://www.envplan.com/epa/editorials/a4277.pdf]

With this sort of example as inspiration, one hopes that scholars of neoliberal nature would take on Castree's task. Yet one can anticipate refusals (and this pertains directly to Castree's two final questions, about the effects of nature's neoliberalization and their evaluation). Some will argue that `neoliberalism' is constituted of a range of diverse, locally rooted practices, thereby justifying a sector-specific, case-study approach for which attempts at terminological systematization are of little utility. This is, as Castree notes, an evasion rather than a convincing response. A more compelling argument is that the biophysical characteristics of resources and associated resource economies differ so greatly that expedience (and analytical rigour) demands a high degree of specialization. But the most fundamental objection (and one that Castree overlooks) is that the chain of causality in the study of environmental impacts arising from projects of neoliberalization is so attenuated, and the confounding variables so numerous (particularly given the multiple scales of regulation and resource production involved), that it is almost impossible to prove that the environmental `impacts' we might identify do indeed arise from a particular strategy identified as neoliberal.



Resource scarcity is self-correcting.


Haynes 08 – BYU economics professor [Beth, “Finite Resources vs. Infinite Resourcefulness”, 8-19, http://wealthisnottheproblem.blogspot.com/2008/08/finite-resources-vs-infinite.html]

It’s common sense. Save today in order to have some available tomorrow. It’s how our bank accounts work, so it seems logical to apply the same reasoning to resource use. But there is a catch. All of economic history, up to and including today, demonstrates that the more we exploit our natural resources, the more available they become. (3-7) How can this possibly be? If we use our “limited, non-renewable resources” we have to end up with less, right? Actually, no. And here is why. We don’t simply “use up” existing resources; we constantly create them. We continually invent new processes, discover new sources, improve the efficiency of both use and extraction, while at the same time we discover cheaper, better alternatives. The fact that a particular physical substance is finite is irrelevant. What is relevant is the process of finding ways to meet human needs and desires. The solutions, and thus what we consider resources, are constantly changing. Oil was a nuisance, not a resource, until humans discovered a use for it. In order to survive and flourish, human beings must succeed at fulfilling certain needs and desires. This can be accomplished in a multitude of ways using a multitude of materials. The requirements of life set the goals. How these goals are met does not depend on the existence or the availability of any particular material. Limits are placed not by the finiteness of a physical substance, but by the extent of our knowledge, of our wealth, and of our freedom. Knowledge. Wealth. Freedom. These are the factors which are essential to solving the problems we face. “The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.” (8) Think for a minute about how we have solved the problem of meeting basic needs throughout history: Transportation: from walking to landing on the moon Communication: from face-to-face conversations to the World Wide Web. Food: from hunting and gathering to intravenous feeding and hydroponics. Shelter: from finding a cave to building skyscrapers Health care: from shamans to MRIs and neurosurgery. How does progress happen? A synopsis of the process is provided by the main theme of Julian Simon’s book, The Ultimate Resource 2: More people, and increased income, cause resources to become more scarce in the short run. Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to search for solutions. Many fail in the search, at cost to themselves. But in a free society, solutions are eventually found. And in the long run, the new developments leave us better off than if the problems had not arisen, that is, prices eventually become lower than before the scarcity occurred. (9) This idea is not just theory. Economists and statisticians have long been analyzing the massive amounts of data collected on resource availability. The conclusion: our ability to solve the problems of human existence is ever-expanding. Resources have become less scarce and the world is a better place to live for more and more people. (3-7) Overall, we create more than we destroy as evidenced by the steady progress in human well being and there is no evidence for concluding that this trend can't and won't continue. Doomsday predictions have been with us since ancient times and they have consistently been proven wrong.




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