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So, does selling their externalities to poorer nations absolve a rich nation of their responsibility?
by danharaj 7y ago
So, does selling their externalities to poorer nations absolve a rich nation of their responsibility?
- crazy1van 7y agoIt depends on whether the poorer nation misrepresented what it would do with the trash.
- peterwwillis 7y agoThis is the "How was I supposed to know the guns I sold would kill people?" defense
- oftenwrong 7y agoOr the "How was I supposed to know the car I sold would be used to run over a crowd of people?" defence
- boomlinde 7y agoAfter a few decades of exported plastic trash ending up in the oceans being common knowledge it doesn't matter whether the handling was initially misrepresented. At best it's willful ignorance, but let's not pretend people have been sending plastic trash to China under the assumption that it would be dealt with responsibly.
- madengr 7y agoChina is the source of that plastic. Flip over any plastic doo-dad; where is it made?
- boomlinde 7y agoFlip over any plastic doo-dad; where is it now? Who bought it? Who decided that we'd rather get these things from China than manufacture them here according to our environmental standards and regulations?
- shitgoose 7y agowas there ever any illusion what poorer nations would do with the trash?
- ionised 7y agoA poorer nation probably will misrepresent what they do with the trash. The sellers can't in all honestly claim they didn't know this would be the result.
- rootusrootus 7y agoChina has the second largest GDP of any nation in the world. I think it's safe to say they are not poor.
- jordache 7y agowhat does it mean to be poor? Economic output of an entire country? Or per capita. When measured by the latter, I can ensure you, China has a shit ton of poor people... greater than the population of the U.S.
- rootusrootus 7y agoEven measured per capita, they're about a third of a way from the top of the list. They have lots of high tech industry, nuclear weapons, etc. They can definitely afford to keep the rivers clean, it's a policy choice not an economic one. They are not poor in any meaningful sense of the word, being taken advantage of by the US and EU to dump our trash on.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- BurningFrog 7y agoChina is spending trillions in foreign aid.
- bilbo0s 7y agoI don't know where you heard that at man, but China is not poor. At all. I mean that place is the opposite of poor. I've been to poor countries. Cuba is poor for instance. Or Guinea. China? Not so much.
- danharaj 7y agoWhy do you think GDP is a good measure of wealth?
- 7y ago
- dfilppi 7y agoYes
- PunchTornado 7y agodon't buy it if you don't want it
- vonmoltke 7y agoWho said it does?
- newshorts 7y agoAre you looking at this from a western perspective? Is China really poor? I would question that.
- wtdata 7y agoWhat do you propose, that we stop doing any business with a poorer nation if we suspect they will somehow behave badly - according to our standards - while carrying out the task?