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2008-01-23 Home Front Economy

UC Berkeley: Rich Countries Do $1.8 Trillion Damage To Poor Countries

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Posted by Seafarious 2008-01-23 03:48|| || Front Page|| [11127 views ] Top

#1 We supply them with medicine, which leads to population growth and stripping the land of virtually anything organic so the soil washes or blows away.
We show them Western wealth in magazines, on video etc., making them realize there could be more to life than a mud hut, and leading some of them to attempt to rise above their stations.
And are they counting China as a rich country now? They supply weapons to poor country leaders to suppress, 'enslave,' and starve their people.

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2008-01-23 07:35|| 2008-01-23 07:35|| Front Page Top

#2 I suppose a better question is this - what isn't our fault?

Posted by Raj 2008-01-23 08:30|| 2008-01-23 08:30|| Front Page Top

#3 I believe it. All the environment wackos prevent them from building canals to fresh water because of the damage to the wilderness, prevent them from using effective DDT prevention, prevent them from using good farming fertilizers and pesticides.

The green movement does more damage to the third world than anyone.

Posted by DarthVader">DarthVader 2008-01-23 08:31|| 2008-01-23 08:31|| Front Page Top

#4 This is terrible. I vote that all money that would be used to fund the salaries of UC Berkeley professors be spent to assist poor countries instead. It's the least we can do.

Posted by Matt 2008-01-23 08:45|| 2008-01-23 08:45|| Front Page Top

#5 "You don't see it until you do the kind of accounting that we do here."

Say no more.

Posted by DepotGuy 2008-01-23 08:46|| 2008-01-23 08:46|| Front Page Top

#6 I vote that all money that would be used to fund the salaries of UC Berkeley professors be spent to assist poor countries instead.

I vote for more direct action, and say we send the professors over there to help out. For however long it takes to rectify this situation.

Posted by tu3031 2008-01-23 08:58|| 2008-01-23 08:58|| Front Page Top

#7 Some of the author's other accomplishments include:

a. Coordinating a team on a policy paper on ecological debt. (any questions concerning who may owe the debt?)

Published poetry in several journals including the conservation-oriented Snowy Egret.

Accomplished artist and classical flutist.

Volunteer plant propagator at UC Botanical Garden.

Posted by Besoeker 2008-01-23 09:21|| 2008-01-23 09:21|| Front Page Top

#8 I vote that all money that would be used to fund the salaries of UC Berkeley professors be spent to assist the despotic kleptomaniacs and their retinue that rule poor countries instead.

Fixed it for you.

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-01-23 09:23|| 2008-01-23 09:23|| Front Page Top

#9 Way back as a college senior ('72) I did a paper on the environmental damage in the USSR.

My conclusion was that the damage was much more severe than equivalent activities in the US due to the Marxist accounting principle known as "a free good". Seems that nothing of a resource nature has any value except as a function of the amount of human labor involved. Ergo waste and rapine were endemic.

Now, who taught economics to all these poor countries?

Posted by AlanC 2008-01-23 09:47|| 2008-01-23 09:47|| Front Page Top

#10 Is that a net cost? You mean they totalled up all the benefits, subtracted the costs, and came up with $1.8 T? I doubt it. $1.8 T has got to be miniscule compared to the benefits of western techology and know-how. How would you put a value on the benefits, given that the benefits include many more people being alive than would have been without western know-how? What's the benefit value of a billion people's lives?

If it's not net cost, or in other words if they didn't do a cost-benefit analysis, then the study is worthless.

But it's worthless anyway, because the uncertainty on any one factor in the cost equation is so large, that when you multiply them out, the result is garbage. No one knows how the climate is going to change, or how much of the change is "anthropogenic". No one knows what the harmful effects will be, or if those harmful effects are balanced by the harmful effects of a static climate (such as the current death rate from cold weather). No one knows how to put dollar values on those hypothetical harmful effects. That's three layers of uncertainty right there.

Posted by moody blues 2008-01-23 09:49|| 2008-01-23 09:49|| Front Page Top

#11 Waiting for the other shoe (reparations) to drop.

Posted by ed 2008-01-23 09:57|| 2008-01-23 09:57|| Front Page Top

#12 When we want more tripe from the whack jobs at Berkeley in the peanut gallery we'll ring the bell. Until then, STFU.

Posted by Woozle Elmeter 2907 2008-01-23 10:06|| 2008-01-23 10:06|| Front Page Top

#13 Abou 1,799,999,999,999,999 of that damage is due to Berkeley and similar whackon nests. Just remeber the millions dead due to the DDT-related brainwashing and also the consequences of their antiwar propaganda in Vietnam (2 million dead in Cambodia) and today's ideological support to islamonazism.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2008-01-23 11:21|| 2008-01-23 11:21|| Front Page Top

#14 "ozone completion"
No, it's ozone DEpletion.
"Oh, that's very different... Never mind."

Why do we even ponder "news" from people who are so stunningly ignorant?

Posted by Darrell 2008-01-23 11:48|| 2008-01-23 11:48|| Front Page Top

#15 1.8 Trillion dollars ain't sh1t. We have 4 Quadrillion worth of pain and anguish from Katrina based on similar calculations.

Posted by BrerRabbit 2008-01-23 13:19|| 2008-01-23 13:19|| Front Page Top

#16 Believing they are being thoughtful causes immeasurable, permanant damage to lefty whackademics' brains...

Posted by M. Murcek">M. Murcek 2008-01-23 14:08|| 2008-01-23 14:08|| Front Page Top

#17 Something Must Be Done (for the children, doncha' know).

I suggest we start by evicting all those pampered exploiters from the Berkeley campus and turning it into a residential, welfare, and health-care center for undocumented workers and suffering third world refugees. We can finance this with a confiscatory tax on Volvos, Priuses, and redwood hot-tubs in lefty infested Marin County.

Posted by Atomic Conspiracy 2008-01-23 15:25|| 2008-01-23 15:25|| Front Page Top

#18 A typical Berkeley day.

Posted by GolfBravoUSMC 2008-01-23 18:47|| 2008-01-23 18:47|| Front Page Top

23:26 Atomic Conspiracy
23:19 3dc
23:15 gorb
23:11 Procopius2k
22:56 Atomic Conspiracy
22:38 RD
22:35 RD
22:23 RD
22:21 OldSpook
22:15 mrp
22:12 Blinky Clang5141
22:06 RD
22:01 smn
21:54 mhw
21:50 DarthVader
21:24 Eric Jablow
21:23 trailing wife
21:19 trailing wife
21:18 no mo uro
21:11 trailing wife
21:06 Eric Jablow
20:58 Vortigern Snaitch7695
20:51 Anonymoose
20:43 Anonymoose