Development/Creating Wealth Is Good For The Environment

[Anonymous]

This is written by Robert Sopuck, an MP for the Manitoba riding of Dauphin- Swan River. Anyone who has travelled in the third world knows how true this. Development creates wealth which produces technology which improves the environment and worker safety.

The environment issue has come a long way since Rachel Carson published "Silent Spring" in 1962 or when Canada's Maurice Strong catalyzed the first Earth Day in 1970. Both events inspired me to study ecology and have a career dedicated to environmental conservation.

Of course back in the 1970's, before I knew any better, I always equated economic development with environmental destruction. And indeed this dogma forms the basis of much environmental policy, especially the left-wing kind.

But as an unrepentant "right-wing environmentalist," I say that creating wealth, via a modern industrial economy, is necessary to conserve the environment. This is a message that you never hear. Television screens are full of belching smokestacks, crowded freeways, and falling trees. By the way, that white "smoke" you see is mostly steam from industrial drying and dewatering processes; but let's not let a cold fact destroy a dramatic image.

But what is never reported is that at a certain point in a country's industrial development, about when a country reaches a per capita income of $3000 per year, environmental quality improves as people demand an end to poor environmental practises.

Let's look at sulphur dioxide (SO2), a significant pollutant, think acid rain, arising from coal burning. SO2 emissions in the United States were non-existent before the advent of coal fired power plants early in the 20th Century but rose rapidly as more coal was burned to fuel rapid industrialization. SO2 emissions peaked in 1970, and by then the US was 4 times more a uent than in 1900. But after 1970 something amazing happened. e U.S. continued to get richer, burn more coal, but SO2 emissions began a long and steady decline. By 2007 the U.S. was some 15 times richer than in 1900 yet SO2 emissions were almost back down to 1900 levels.

How could this be? Easy. By then a wealthy country, the U.S. decided that enough was enough and mandated the installation of expensive scrubbing technology on all coal plants resulting in a dramatic decline in SO2 emissions. Something that only a rich country could do.

We have our very own success stories in Canada. The "moonscape" around Sudbury has been replaced by a natural forest; again thanks to the application of SO2 scrubbing technology. In 1989 the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney implemented the Pulp and Paper Effluent Regulations which mandated the installation of waste water treatment plants (I managed one in a previous life) at pulp and paper mills.

What was once a toxic effluent became effluent discharges that were more often than not of better quality than the receiving water. By the way, under the Stephen Harper government, of which I was a proud MP, most environmental indicators showed a steady improvement.

There are hundreds of such examples ranging from low emission vehicles, the huge tracts of land set aside as parks, wetland restoration, to fish and wildlife conservation. The list goes on and on but what is the take-away? Well, it is only wealthy industrial societies, operating under free market and democratic systems that have the wherewithal to carry out these good works on behalf of the environment. Impoverished countries couldn't dream of emulating this; they simply cannot afford it.