Outsourcing Pollution: The Dirty Side Of Clean Alternatives

Physicist and renowned environmental leader, Vandana Shiva, talks about globalization, emissions trading, and environmental justice.

1 minute read

September 14, 2007, 2:00 PM PDT

By Abhijeet Chavan @http://twitter.com/legalaidtech


"...the triple crisis [of climate change, peak oil, and global resource depletion] is really seriously converging on India, India being one of the preferred spots for outsourcing of all the pollution and energy-intensive production of the world. We hear of outsourcing of jobs in the information technology sector. We don't often enough hear about the outsourcing of pollution to the third world, the resource-intensive, resource-hungry industry like steel and iron and aluminum and automobile manufacture."

"The three, four options being offered to contain emissions are biofuels, which, in fact, will increase emissions; carbon and emissions trading, which is reversing the "polluter pays" principle and is making the society pay the polluter, rewarding them with credits. Most of these credits are then being given to polluting industry: HFC companies, sponge iron plants, cutting down forests and then planting palm oil. These are becoming clean development mechanisms, which are really dirty."

Friday, September 14, 2007 in Democracy Now!

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