From China: Polluters Are Not Patriots

From China: Polluters are not Patriots

On May 12, 2008 an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter Scale caused over 87,000 deaths and some $80 billions in damage. Imagine that you were a successful entrepreneur with substantial investments in land, buildings and capital goods in the Sichuan earthquake zone. Obviously, the majority of your employees – the human capital that makes your business viable – live in the quake zone.

With this in mind, let’s brainstorm the issues of pollution and patriotism; of whether or not citizens, business professionals or other agents who cause or allow preventable pollution are patriots or criminals. We start with the following thought experiment: If you had known ahead of time that the quake was imminent, would you have tried to prevent or mitigate the disaster? We can assume that most people would say, “Yes.” Certainly, of the ten or twelve friends to whom I posed this question, each replied with a surprised “Of course” or an annoyed “Yes, of course!” The word duty was mentioned; it also appeared repeatedly in the media, often as civic duty or social duty, when volunteers were asked why they rushed off to offer any assistance they could provide in the quake zone.

Next, let’s think in terms of nations and the globe. The United States, with just 4.6% of the world’s population, is the greatest producer of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change: 7.181.4 million metric tons of carbon equivalent in 2006. China, with 20% of world population, ranks second in terms of greenhouse gases: 5.322.69 million metric tons in 2006. Combined, the U.S. and China accounted for almost half -- 46.48% -- of all greenhouse gas production in the world: 26.9 million metric tons in 2006. Note that my source is the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy. Note, too, that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, at 375-387 parts per million (ppm), is at the highest level in some 675,000 years. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the level was 270-290 ppm. Anthropogenic carbon (or equivalents) is injected into the atmosphere at a rate of 4.1 billion metric tons per year. Since 1750, atmospheric methane – a far more potent greenhouse gas – has increased 150 per cent, from 700 parts per billion by volume (ppbv) to 1,751 ppbv today.

Whether or not humans cause global warming is not the issue here. The issue is that we contribute to it by fouling our own nest – our nations, our globe. Some of the gases we put into the atmosphere destroy the ozone layer that protects all life as we know it. (Check the Web for simulations based on real-time monitoring of the ozone holes over the Artic and Antarctic, and how they wax and wane. Or check the Web for actual reductions in Arctic ice. Scary stuff.) Furthermore, we know what happens when greenhouse gas emissions reach levels with which the atmosphere cannot cope: Environmental meltdown results. This should not surprise anyone who has read the science. Ilya Prigogine, the 1973 Nobel laureate in chemistry, proved that once the symmetries of complex dissipative systems in dynamic equilibrium are fractured, the systems will collapse, with unpredictable results. Our Earth is one such system on a grand scale. Ozone holes, glaciers and Arctic ice in retreat, entire Antarctic ice sheets plunging into the sea: These are indicators that global, environmental symmetries are under dramatic assault. Unlike the Sichuan earthquake, climate change due to global warming is a train wreck – rather, a chemical catastrophe -- in slow yet rapidly accelerating motion.

For the flint-eyed “realists” out there, the captains of industry, finance and business, who may not be moved by such facts and figures, I recommend The Summer of Acid Rain, in the 19 December 2007 issue of The Economist: ”Molten iron raining down like cowpats; ice floes at New Orleans. The weather of 1783 was an extraordinary case of sudden climate change driven by atmospheric gases.” Those gases traveled the world; they came from an Icelandic volcano that erupted over months. You may or may not be moved by the accounts of mass starvation in Alaska, Egypt, Iceland and Japan; of deaths in Europe caused by poisoned air. It was not good for business.

I bring these issues up each year with my students of economics because the majority of them intend to go into business. A few of them report they plan to enter government to serve their country. When we study economic growth and development, the concept of negative externalities, such as pollution, comes up. (Negative externalities are external costs or effects that are borne or suffered by people who are not parties to a given economic activity.) I try to make this issue as personal as possible. As in past years, I asked this year’s students, “Do you love your parents?” Of course they did. “Do you love your grandparents?” Again, they did. “Do you think your grandparents love you?” By that time, they were a bit restive, if not angry. One young lass said, “Teacher, of course they love me! What does this have to do with economics?” So I asked her if she would love her children and her grandchildren. “I know I will,” she replied, in a tone both disdainful and furious. I assured her I was certain she would. “Now, bear with me, OK? Raise your hands to answer. How many of you are patriots, love your country? Love China?” They all shot their hands into the air; a few of the lads all but leapt out of their seats. They demanded to know why I was asking them such personal questions.

Well, the answer went something like this: “The looming environmental meltdown will affect -- adversely; significantly -- you, your children, your grandchildren, your country and your world. Listen, kids: The Economist reported, in August of 2004, that 70% of all water in China is so polluted by industrial, agricultural and human waste that it is unfit for drinking or bathing, and much of it is so toxic it cannot be used for irrigation. Just think of Tai Lake! The 20 most polluted cities in the world are here in China. So if you go into business, industry or government, your love of family and your love of country will be proved by whether or not you solve or mitigate the problem of negative externalities. You cannot assert, with any rationality or logic, that you love your family or that you are a patriot if you knowingly continue to poison the water, land and air your family and your country rely on for their very existence. So I ask you: Is it patriotic or criminal to pollute or allow preventable pollution?”

The same is true for my students’ elders anywhere in the world: Whatever else they may be, polluters are not patriots, and very well might be criminals. Politicians take note.

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Ned Boudreau, a native of Central New York, teaches economics in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme at Shanghai Pinghe School in Shanghai, China.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future