Our Trash Is Someone Else's Burden

Everyone knows that the industrialized world consumes more of the Earth's materials than developing or 'third world nations.' Yet many people do not even consider that what we do to hurt the environment hurts the entire planet and at a significant economic cost to the poorest of the poor. Looking at vaguely we can say "yeah yeah, right" but when you add up the numbers, the problem is extremely serious. That was what researchers at UC Berkeley set out to do.

From NBC11:

The study examined the impacts of the expansion of agriculture, deforestation, overfishing, loss of swamps and ozone completion from 1961 to 2000.

When all these impacts are added up, the portion of the footprint of high-income nations falling on low-income countries is greater than their entire financial debt, or about $1.8 trillion, according to lead researcher Thara Srinivasan."

At least to some extent, the rich nations have developed at the expense of the poor and, in effect, there is a debt to the poor," said coauthor Richard B. Norgaard, an ecological economist and UC Berkeley professor of energy and resources. "That, perhaps, is one reason that they are poor. You don't see it until you do the kind of accounting that we do here."

And that is merely a conservative estimate, the true cost could be far higher. What we do here affects us all, and that isn't merely about being good stewards of the environment, it hurts economies world-wide.