Will poor nations suffer greatly from climate change?
Cover Interview of November 17, 2011
My critics have “granted me” the point that developed free market cities have the ability and the capacity to cope with many aspects of climate change. But they have countered that poor nations such as Bangladesh could suffer greatly from climate change.
Of course this is true. As a free market optimist, however, I want to make several points.
First, do not forget the “Law of 72.” In a world with compounding, a nation whose income grows by 3% per year enjoys a doubling of per-capita income in 24 years (3*24=72). If a nation’s economy could grow by 8% per year, then it will enjoy a doubling in just 9 years.
Japan and South Korea have grown by these rates in the past; India and China are growing by these rates today. Each of these nations grew when embracing free market reforms and joining international free trade agreements.
As a nation’s per-capita income increases, poverty rates decline and individuals have more resources to purchase better food, housing, and access to electricity. Each of these necessities will help individuals in the developing world to adapt to climate change.
From the perspective of this year, 2011, if climate change’s major impacts will start to unfold in the middle of this century, then today’s poor nations will still have time to “catch up.”
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
My critics have “granted me” the point that developed free market cities have the ability and the capacity to cope with many aspects of climate change. But they have countered that poor nations such as Bangladesh could suffer greatly from climate change.
Of course this is true. As a free market optimist, however, I want to make several points.
First, do not forget the “Law of 72.” In a world with compounding, a nation whose income grows by 3% per year enjoys a doubling of per-capita income in 24 years (3*24=72). If a nation’s economy could grow by 8% per year, then it will enjoy a doubling in just 9 years.
Japan and South Korea have grown by these rates in the past; India and China are growing by these rates today. Each of these nations grew when embracing free market reforms and joining international free trade agreements.
As a nation’s per-capita income increases, poverty rates decline and individuals have more resources to purchase better food, housing, and access to electricity. Each of these necessities will help individuals in the developing world to adapt to climate change.
From the perspective of this year, 2011, if climate change’s major impacts will start to unfold in the middle of this century, then today’s poor nations will still have time to “catch up.”