The Greens Vs. India and China

Developing countries find themselves at a critical juncture. The environmental ministries in many developing countries have become outposts of local Green converts.

In light of that choice, the economic ministries in these countries must play a central role in resisting eco-imperialism. They must have the last say on any transnational treaty or convention their country signs.

Why do the Greens persist with their crusade? The reason is that, like any religion, their beliefs are not based on reason — but on faith.

That is why, in my view, the time has surely come for those who do not profess the same faith to take on these new ecological imperialists.

The first point of resistance is to recognize what they are seeking to do.

Bluntly, they would like to perpetuate the ancient poverty of the great Eurasian civilizations — India and China. As they see it, these nations’ burgeoning unwashed masses are increasingly emitting noxious pollutants as they seek to make their people prosperous and achieve parity with the West.

As economic historians have emphasized, the Industrial Revolution — which led to the rise of the West — was based on converting the traditional organic rural economy.

Previously, it had used energy derived from land, whose supply was ultimately limited. It changed into a mineral-energy-based economy that still uses fossil fuels — whose supply, for all practical purposes, is virtually unlimited.

It is by burning fossil fuels that the West has gotten rich and redressed that mass structural poverty which had been the fate of its masses for millennia.

The same opportunity is now available to the developing countries. But the Greens in the West, in serving their dubious cause of global warming, want to deny the same means for the developing world’s poor to climb out of poverty.

To see why, remember that the Industrial Revolution in England — and the globalization which followed — was based on two forms of capitalism.

One form was institutional, that namely defended by Adam Smith (because of its productivity-enhancing effects, even in an organic economy). The other was physical, namely the capital stock of stored energy represented by the fossil fuels.

The Greens are, of course, against both forms of capitalism — the free trade advocated by Smith, as well as the continued burning of fossil fuels. That leaves little hope for the world’s poor.

Despite their protestations to the contrary, the Greens are the enemy of the world’s poor.

The UN and many of its specialized agencies have provided antiglobalization environmental NGOs, as well as a host of others espousing Western politically correct causes, an institutional framework to push their agenda.

It is time to shut them down. They do little to advance the cause of peace and prosperity, which an imperial pax is meant to promote.

Even the more technocratic agencies, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, have served their purposes.

Others, such as the World Health Organization, seem to have stepped well beyond their purely technical arena to take up various politically correct but dubious crusades — like those against smoking and obesity.

Others, like the International Labor Organization (ILO), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and United Nations Economic and Social Council (UNESCO), have also served whatever initial purpose they might have had.

These organizations are all incubators of various antiglobalization agendas, staffed by rent-seeking international bureaucracies.

They do not serve the interests of the U.S. imperium — and even less so those of the world’s poor in whose name they claim to speak.

They should all be closed, or else the United States should withdraw its financial support from them — and let them fend for themselves.

But this is unlikely to happen, because many of the causes espoused by the NGOs and these international agencies are part of the West’s cultural values.

It is the attempt to legislate these Western habits of the heart worldwide that poses the gravest danger to world order.

It bears an uncanny resemblance to the ethical component of 19th century imperialism, which was in part responsible for the breakdown of the 19th century liberal international economic order.

This imperialism was in part motivated by the civilizing mission embodied in the “white man’s burden.” Something similar is afoot today.

The calls for “ethical” trading, “ethical” foreign policies and the insistence that everyone embrace the West’s political system of majoritarian democracy are symptomatic of these trends.

There are dangerous pressures in the West to use these multilateral institutions to legislate these Western values worldwide.

The various proposals to introduce labor and environmental standards in the WTO and to tie issues of human rights to trade and investment under the rubric of ethical trading are of this ilk. They have neither logic nor ethics on their side.

Even if these protectionist attacks are beaten back, they can in the meantime lead to international friction, which could slowly unravel the new liberal international economic order.

Moreover, they tend to aggravate the suspicion of many developing countries that the newly emerging globalized economy will lead to a form of cultural imperialism that will undermine their ancient and cherished ways of life.