Green Tariffs, Foreign Aid and The End of Environmentalism
India warns the U.S. and EU not to enact “green” tariffs on products that create carbon dioxide emissions.
President Obama’s foreign aid policy receives criticism for perpetuating poverty.
Low oil prices and the global recession are seen as threats to the advance of the environmental activist movement.
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1. TRADE
India warns the U.S. and EU not to enact “green” tariffs on products that create carbon dioxide emissions.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Fran Smith on why carbon tariffs are essentially a tax on economic growth:
“Earlier, China’s top climate change official had warned about possible retaliation if carbon tariffs were assessed, as was suggested by the U.S. Secretary of Energy. Sounds like this issue is shaping up as the rich against the poor, i.e., already industrialized and developed countries attempting to penalize those emerging economies dependent on energy use for their continued economic growth.”
2. BUSINESS
President Obama’s foreign aid policy receives criticism for perpetuating poverty.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Editorial Director Ivan Osorio on why more money for foreign aid is not the answer to Third World poverty:
“…the problem is true everywhere Western donor nations ladle dollops of aid to poor countries. The notion that public policy problems cannot be solved by throwing money at them should not be controversial — yet when it comes to poverty in developing countries, that remains the largely dominant approach. Thankfully, however, Mary O’Grady’s critique appears part of a growing chorus, as the media attention that Zambian author Dambisa Moyo is receiving for her new book Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and Why There is a Better Way for Africa. Speaking at the Cato Institute last Friday, Moyo also strongly criticized the view of poverty as a ‘trap,’ which she described as product of a condescending Western ‘pity’ that denigrates aid recipients’ resourcefulness and abilities.”
3. ENVIRONMENT
Low oil prices and the global recession are seen as threats to the advance of the environmental activist movement.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: President Fred L. Smith, Jr. on two differing philosophies about protecting the environment:
“The environment is valuable and valued by many. The difficulty is that we have relegated its ‘protection’ and ‘management’ to bureaucrats – and suppressed the evolution of property rights in environmental resources (wildlife, groundwater, fisheries). These resources remain as common property resources – and we experience repeatedly the Tragedy of the Commons. However, the most distressing aspect of the debate over environmental policy, is that the view gaining prevalence from the Progressive side is decidedly anti-human, and anti-technology at its core.”
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