> it would be equally valid to argue for as many coal-fired > power plants to be built in Africa, India and China as is > humanly possible The author conveni

> it would be equally valid to argue for as many coal-fired > power plants to be built in Africa, India and China as is > humanly possible The author conveniently omits to mention where the coal will come from, and what will happen when it runs out. The real elephant in the room when it comes to trade, that free-trade zealots like the Copenhagen "Consensus" never address, is that the developed world can only sustain the current level of living conditions by outsourcing labour and environmental damage. If the current developing countries are going to reach the living standards of developed countries, who are they going to outsource their cheap labour and environmental damage to? It is likely someone is going to post a comment lecturing me about how the economy isn't zero-sum. The economy isn't zero-sum, but zero-sum is one extreme, with each individuals available raw resources being independent at the other extreme. For available raw resources to be independent, there would need to be infinite land, water, and fossil fuels close to every individual, with no possibility of environmental damage. In reality, the situation is somewhere between the two extremes - the more one individual consumes in absolute terms, the less there is available to others, but it is still possible to grow the pie slightly through innovation. Making developing countries more developed might grow the pie very slightly, but the only way people in those countries will have a developed world standard of living is by giving others now or in the future less in absolute terms. Less inequality is not a bad thing, but it doesn't justify giving ourselves more now at the expense of future generations.