Sustaining Our Waste

Some disturbing reporting and commentary about a recent chemical dump in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. While I'm not surprised, I had no idea transnational dumping was such a problem. I guess it's in part due to the lack of reporting on the subject, as the article points out. It's NIMBY on a global scale.

I think the questions the article raises are symptomatic of a larger problem. There is almost nothing which is sustainable about the U.S. economic paradigm. Our agriculture, energy consumption, budget deficits, trade imbalances, educational system (unless you're talking about sustaining an ignorant populace), none of it.

We are in many ways running a colonial system. Of course we no longer own other lands or people, but we do use them as a resource in the stead of internal development. This is not always a bad thing, for it's no doubt helped some countries to develop and gain wealth. But I can't help but feel that the only thing it sustains is a bloated sense of economic power. If our economy is perched on a pile of debt and a domestic workforce that is ever declining in relative skills and knowledge, how long can that last before it collapses from within?

I say this as someone who feels globalization is on the whole a good thing and possesses the potential to lift billions out of abject poverty. I am not a protectionist. I just feel that the economic challenge America faces is distinctly different from those of the past. The Soviet Union was hollow. Japan was brilliant, but small (and itself a bit protectionist). Europe has long kept pace with us on its own terms.

Asia presents something altogether new. If it can navigate dicey political problems (and that's a big "if"), it will become an economic and cultural force on an unprecedented scale. There's a priori that this change can't be of overall benefit, and I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing. But people of my generation shouldn't be surprised if 50 years from now our country is far less relevant than it was in our youths.