BrianGarst.com

Kenneth Green had a great Earth Day post yesterday pointing out that consumption can be a benefit to the environment:

We all want to live in a clean, healthy environment. But only people whose basic needs are met, who have adequate housing, food, clean water, education, healthcare, and economic opportunity can take the time to care about protecting their environment, and can afford to do so.

By engaging in trade with other countries, we help them grow wealthier, helping them to afford environmental protection, while we help ourselves by gaining access to goods and services that it might be impossible, or ruinously expensive, for us to manufacture ourselves.

So go have some coffee, and help Africa grow wealthy enough to protect the environment. Maybe buy some nice wooden furniture from Africa or Asia. Buy a nice sari from India, or a fine tea set from China.

One of the inherent contradictions within the environmental movement is its recent penchant for extolling self-sufficiency and buying local. These insular practices not only reduce efficiency overall (by denying the virtues of specialization), they also do nothing to help bring the rest of the world out of poverty.  Anyone who has ever seen a picture of a poor African village, for instance, ought to realize why it is they are littered with debris and trash.