Should the Third World sacrifice its ambitions to placate the conscience of the First?

Should the Third World sacrifice its ambitions to placate the conscience of the First?


All of the hoopla over Tata’s Indian-made, sub-three thousand dollar car is rather interesting, particularly from an environmental racism perspective. Heaven forbid that those cars should be so cheap that Indian peasants used to walking or bicycling might actually be able to buy one and do what the majority of Americans take for granted—drive to the corner grocery store or market.

No, the entire idea is horrible. And, think of the effect of such materialism would have on the planet’s environment—air pollution, increased demand for petroleum and oil by-products. How dare those people think they deserve cars—like richer countries.

Who do they think they are? Human beings? How dare they think they have the right to a lifestyle that we enjoy.

The fact that the United States, with far less than the majority of people on the planet, does most of the polluting, uses most of the oil, has the greatest consumer society on the planet—with the resulting massive contribution to global warming, oceanic pollution and groundwater poisoning, escapes many of the pundits, prognosticators and wanna be futurists. Or perhaps it is by design.

The oft-paternalistic perspective of “the West” toward developing Third World economies is rather interesting. It seems that the so-called Third World is OK as long as developing countries serve as sources for cheap labor, inexpensive consumer goods, proxy wars and the occasional ‘rent a womb’, but let them actually think they can compete with ‘the West’ like real people and the critics come out of the woodwork.

Forget the fact that our own wealth has been gained from massive deforestation, the poisoning of rivers, lakes and streams, not to mention growing dead zones in the ocean due to farm chemical run off. No, let’s sweep our own culpability under the rug and berate the Third World for wanting to improve their own economies and the lives of their citizens.

Perhaps the “environmentalists”, along with their plethora of gloom and doom, environmental catastrophe, global warming, dying seas, “don’t you dare ADD to the mix” cadre of do as I say do, not as I do hypocrites need to take a page from their own book. Even now, as the United States refuses to join global anti-pollution efforts, the federal government has also knocked down state efforts to decrease pollution within their own boundaries.

According to the International Times, California is the 8th largest economy in the world. As such, it is understandable that such a large economy, even as part of the larger national economy, would want to regulate pollution, green house gasses, and toxic waste within its own borders—something the industries who own political Washington do not want to see happening.

The International Tribune, in defining California’s place on the world economic scene notes that,
The state, with about 37 million residents, ranks behind the U.S. itself, Japan, Germany, China, the United Kingdom, France and Italy, according to U.S. Commerce Department and World Bank figures. Spain and Canada complete the top 10. (International Herald Tribune, 1-12-07)

Hence, the 8th largest economy in the world, a manufacturing, academic production powerhouse has been prohibited by an industry-friendly federal government from regulating and containing pollution within its own borders. Even worse, Native People within the nation’s borders are forced to deal with the cumulative results of the nation’s mining, particularly uranium mining.

Hundreds of thousands of Native Americans and other US citizens reside downwind of uranium mines, nuclear waste facilities and other producers of airborne, carcinogenic by-products of the nation’s nuclear power and weaponry industries. Out of sight—of the majority of the nation, nuclear waste-generated cancers, tumors and other deadly illnesses wreak havoc on several Native American reservations and communities in the American West.

A 2005 article in the Washington Post noted the approval of a multi-billion dollar nuclear waste storage plan for Nevada:
The federal government yesterday approved a $3.1 billion plan by a private corporation to store tens of thousands of tons of highlyr adioactive nuclear waste on a Native American reservation in Utah, potentially removing a major obstacle to the nuclear industry's ambitions for renewed growth.

The move paves the way for the industry to circumvent a lengthy political stalemate over a proposed public nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada and could rid dozens of overcrowded nuclear plants around the country of the need to store radioactive products that will remain dangerous for centuries. (Washington Post, 9-10-05)

A 1995 research paper noted the toxic, multi-generation effect of the nuclear industry on Native Americans. The paper, Native Americans and the Environment: A survey of twentieth century issues with particular reference to peoples of the Colorado Plateau and Southwest, noted several health related issues:
Radioactive pollution may be the most serious threat to the long-term welfare of Native peoples. In the 1950s, as part of the call to national defense, the Navajo Tribal Council approved mineral agreements with Kerr McGee Corporation to mine uranium. Non-union Navajo miners were exposed to high levels of radioactivity in mines and mills. One 1959 report found radiation levels ninety times acceptable limits. Radioactive mill tailings dumped on the banks of the San Juan River crept into that drainage, and in 1979 a United Nuclear uranium mill tailings pond near Churchrock gave way, spilling its 100 million gallons of sludge into the Rio Puerco River. Navajos still cannot use the water. Cancers, respiratory ailments, and birth defects related to radiation exposure among miners, mill workers, and Navajo families in the region increased dramatically. (Lewis, David R. 1995. "Native Americans and the Environment: A survey of twentieth century issues." American Indian Quarterly, 19: 423-450)

The irony is that while polluters continue pumping out million of radioactive, carcinogenic and toxic ingredients into our air and water, we want to tell other countries that they have no right to do what we are doing, that their only purpose is to serve our needs and present a pool of cheap labor to supply our need for inexpensive electronic toys and consumer goods.

And so it is, in the shadow of the ‘greatest nation on earth’, intense, pollution-generating manufacturing continues. Because they are remote—remote from the nation’s power centers and politically connected power places, the nation’s Native American reservations, holy places and residents remain in the shadow of death, outmatched and outgunned by a federal government and power industry which shoves death, destruction and nuclear waste down their throats.

Polluters are still pumping hundreds of millions of tons of toxic pollutants into the biosphere and Native Americans and others who live in the shadow of our uranium industry facilities and nuclear waste dumps dance with cancer and early death—all the while nuclear energy proponents proclaim their “safe, non-polluting energy”, and our jingoists in environmentalist guise, want the Third World to pay for the sins of the First.