快猫短视频

FREE trade is not a one-way ticket to pollution purgatory, claims a World
Bank report. Many greens, and some economists, say free trade encourages
industry to relocate to countries with lax anti-pollution laws, mostly in the
developing world. To maintain competitiveness, rich nations join this downward
slide towards more liberal attitudes to pollution, dubbed 鈥渢he race to the
产辞迟迟辞尘鈥�.

But last week, free-trade advocates at the World Bank hit back with new
research suggesting that this logic does not hold in the real world. David
Wheeler of the Bank鈥檚 development research group has found that the three
countries to which foreign manufacturers moved in the greatest numbers in the
1990s鈥擟hina, Mexico and Brazil鈥攈ave cleaner air than before.

Despite rampant industrialisation, urban air pollution in China has fallen by
40 per cent. After peaking in the early 1990s, Mexico City鈥檚 air has become
cleaner as the North American Free Trade Association filled the megacity with
American factories. And in Brazil鈥檚 industrial heartland around S茫o
Paulo, pollution fell by more than half between 1984 and 1998.

With pollution in the US falling too, Wheeler concludes there is 鈥渘o sign of
a race to the bottom. Air quality seems to be improving in countries at all
income levels.鈥�

The reason, he says, is almost as surprising. Despite the frequent complaints
of manufacturers, the cost of cleaning up is not so great. And many companies
relocating from the rich world automatically bring their higher standards with
them as part of a 鈥済ood neighbour鈥� policy.

However, Larry Lohmann of The Corner House, a British group fighting trade
globalisation, dismisses the research as 鈥渁 piece of public relations. Many of
the declines he documents occurred before the boom in foreign investment,鈥� he
says. And the data only covers suspended particulates鈥攄ust and
soot鈥攔ather than more insidious pollutants.

Some economists may be disappointed, however. 鈥淏etween you and me,鈥� the World
Bank鈥檚 chief economist Lawrence Summers wrote in a memo leaked in 1992,
鈥渟houldn鈥檛 the Bank be encouraging migration of dirty industries to less
developed countries?鈥� They should be free to sell their air for polluting to the
highest bidder, he argued. Summers became Clinton鈥檚 treasury secretary.