Ramaluk

is some dink from wherever that hasn't filled out his/her profile

COMMENTS BY RAMALUK

On 2008-07-21 01:54:14, Ramaluk, commented on this article:
This article is pretty sad. You spent how many weeks on that boat, and you come back and decide the market will provide a solution to the world’s environmental problems? Where’s the profit motive for providing a public good like cleaning up that massive ocean of garbage you guys saw? This environmental externality is exactly what you would expect in the absence of collective action. Why do environmentalists who might push for a collective solution piss you off so much? Your writing would all be a lot more informative (possibly not your primary motivation)if you had done a bit more research on environmental movements. Environmental activism is well-established in developing countries and in poor communities in the United States. The idea that people have to be rich before they care about the scenery misses the point: for the poor, the environment is directly related to their livelihood. That’s why fishing communities in Thailand fight against people exporting cheap shrimp to the U.S. - because they need the mangroves that shrimp farming operations destroy so that they can eat, not because they look pretty. You have a very privileged, western way of looking at what’s at stake in environmental debates. I agree that greens can be annoyingly self-righteous. But I am even less impressed by your affectation of a I’m-too-cool-to-give-shit attitude about this effed up issue. Any movement that involves a shift in people’s attitudes to create change will embody values, including the environmentalism. Embrace innovation, sure, but without regulation or a social movement, industries will continue externalizing the social and environmental costs of their technology because that lowers their production costs.