Is free trade bad for the enviornment?

Question

Since trade favors economic growth, it brings about at least part of the necessary means to preserve the environment. The better off people are, the more they demand a cleaner environment. Furthermore, it is not uncommon that employment opportunities in export activities encourage people to give up highly polluting marginal occupations. In short, if trade is made freer, the world will get richer--and that is the surest way to make it cleaner too.

This was an argument my professor made abotu free trade and how it is good for the enviornment.

Your thoughts?

My opinion on this is that it is bad for the enviornment. An example would be Fedex, they are big into free trade and their logistics are terrible for the enviornment. Air pollution in Co2, noise pollution are just two examples.

Answer 1

My first thought is that your Prof has his head in the clouds and does not see the true state of the world

Your Prof is right when he states that the better off people are the more they demand a cleaner environment. Things will definitely improve for these folks as they become more conservative in their needs. Of course, how many people are ready to give up their gas guzzlers in favor of a hybrid? Sadly, most people have tunnel vision and do not see the whole picture, just what affects their lives.

Who does Free Trade ultimately benefit? Where is Free Trade taking humanity and the planet in the foreseeable future? Your question requires both of these questions be answered.

Most people will agree that Free Trade has been a rotten deal for both Canada and the U.S citizens. Since its implementation we have seen a steady rise in unemployment and foreclosures as employers went abroad to hire the cheaper slave labour forces to be found in foreign countries. Within a year the exodus from NA was being felt by everyone. Mexico, India, and China have certainly done well by Free Trade, but has the common North American person done as well?

This tremendous job loss leaves Americans with far less disposable income and fewer companies to hire them. This in turn affects tax bases municipally as well as federally. Who is profiting here? Not the citizens! The foreign laborers are being paid peanuts so, although they are minimally better off than they were before, they are still living in squalor or below the poverty line. The profits go to the global elite. As they have demonstrated, these folk are not too big on sharing anything once it is in their grasp.

If the environment of earth is ill humanity becomes ill. Our health depends upon its health. The environment is the world around us, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil in which we grow our foods. It is exciting to see individuals begin to take responsibility for their footsteps upon the planet even if the movement was only taken seriously once Global Warming began to hurt big business. There are all sorts of wonderful initiatives out there.

However, we can pretty things up, cut down on carbons and become more eco friendly but all of these accomplishments will mean nothing if we do not get to the invisible pollutions that are becoming harder and harder to escape. I am not trying to denigrate these wonderful actions people are taking. We have to begin somewhere.

It is imperative that we take the legislators and the men behind them, the corrupt financiers, and insist on even wider actions. War is obscene and many object one way or another, but the ruling elite do not listen. They are too busy lining their already over full pockets with the profits from the evils they disperse every hour into our environment. I refer to depleted uranium, the ultimate tool for genocide.

This is not a pollution we can see. This is a pollution that kills from within.

Depleted uranium is the everlasting aftermath of war. Only those who have seen are aware. The images and the very idea of such evil are kept from the populace for fear of upsetting them. What they don’t know won’t hurt them seems to be the attitude. This is not information readily available in the “free” propaganda press of the West.This menace will be affecting our lives forever and ever and is irreversible. I do not think your professor has considered this aspect of pollution.

In April of 2003, the World Health Organization said they expect global cancer rates to increase 50 percent by the year 2020. Infant mortality is going up at appalling rates all over the world, an indicator of the level of radioactive pollution. Basically, it’s like smoking radioactive crack. It goes straight into the blood stream and is carried all throughout the body into the bones, the bone marrow, and the brain. It goes into the fetus and corrupts its development. It’s a systemic and a radiological poison.

When the U.S. and Russia signed the partial test ban treaty in 1963, infant mortality rate started dropping again, which is normal. Now they are going up again. It was Chernobyl and other nuclear disasters that actually destroyed the Soviet Union because the former Soviet Union is very, very sick from all the radiation that was released. The costs incurred by the medical system broke the nation.

The military justifies the use of these weapons for two reasons.

One is to destroy the enemy soldiers, and the other, which is just as important, is to destroy the enemy civilian population. By causing illnesses and disease, long lingering illnesses really impact the productivity and the economy of a country.

It affects all living things. That’s why they call it "omnicide," which means it kills all living things — the plants, the animals, the bacteria. This bombing will go on because it is part of a callous form of genocide, the best way to remove a culture and significantly decrease the population of the planet..

Soldiers who served in Afghanistan, the Gulf and Iraq have brought it home. Many who served in GulfWar2 are now paying this price as are their wives and children. Their voices have been hushed by the government. Even the official military site denies its effects despite overwhelming evidence.

Winds carry this radioactive dust several miles, contaminating the air and water that innocent humans breathe and drink. These munitions were used in both Iraq wars, Kosovo, and training sessions in Puerto Rico. We have huge dust storms that are a million square miles and transport millions of tons of dust and sand every year around the world.

The main centers of these dust storms are the Gobi Desert in China, which is where the Chinese did atmospheric testing, so that’s all contaminated with radiation, and it gets transported right over Japan. It then comes straight across the Pacific and dumps its sand and dust in North America. The stuff is loaded with radioactive isotopes, soot, pesticides, chemicals, pollution — everything is in it — fungi, bacteria, viruses.

The Sahara Desert is another huge dust center, and it goes up all over Europe and straight across the Atlantic, to the Caribbean, and up the East Coast. Of course, you get it in Texas with those hurricanes. They all originate in the Sahara Desert.

The third region is the Western United States, which is where the Nevada test site is located.

Concentration of the depleted uranium particles in the atmosphere all around the globe is increasing. There are indications that the U.S. will go in June and bomb the heck out of Iran. U.S. Army ammunition factories have very large orders for those huge bunker buster bombs that have 5,000 tons of DU in the warhead.

I ask who profits from these devices? Your leaders, including the Bushes and the Clintons along with their Illuminati Masters, own the munitions factories and are elected in by US, the people do.

This action of war can easily kill off the world’s population. It already is, and it doesn’t just affect people. It affects all living systems, plants, animals, the bacteria. The things that we eat for instance, if they have DU in them, will put it in our systems, and pollute ourselves.

Let’s return to your question. How can we consider the world more environmentally responsible no matter our wealth if we are poisoning ourselves like this? We are killing our world from within and no local clean air initiatives are going to do much in the face of such a problem. It will help, so will alternative energies and conservation.

However, this problem of pollution gets to the heart of the matter. It will affect every one of us eventually. Just the medical costs alone could empty the Federal Reserve, should the Rockefellers decide to allow opening it. However, they stand to profit and will never take a financial hit over such a small thing as the lives of other human beings.

Remember, your taxes pay for these bombs. And the fallout is going to effect you as well. Is this a bit of a double whammy?

If this scenario makes you feel helpless, while you are out cleaning the local environment, think about what you can do. Start getting active in protesting the wars that are being waged. Demand action from your local and federal representatives. Make them accountable or vote them out. We cannot undo what has been done. This stuff lasts in the environment for 4.5 billion years, longer than the life of our beloved globe. But we can start now.

I am sorry I left your topic of Free Trade, but it is all tied in with the problems I am speaking of. But this is all part and parcel of pollution and the purveyors of Free Trade are the same ones who profit from the creation and use of these monstrosities. There will be no environment if they are allowed to continue.

Either that or we will end up like Brave New World, a planet of two worlds, that of the obscenely wealthy with artificial nature, and that of the poor and undesirable, a nuclear landscape. Either way, both will be being poisoned from within.

This is why I think your Prof is only half right in his assertion. Sadly he is right on the easier and less meaningful side.
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Answer 2

Your professor is correct. The richest nations are the environmentally 'cleanest'. The poorest nations are the worst polluters.

Answer 3

It was not long ago people died of old age in their 50's, Nowadays 80 seems somewhat young to die, Whatever we (the world) are doing obviously can't be bad.