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Originally Posted by jamesqf
Their opinion too, or else why would so many try so hard to emigrate?
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Based on corruption, not on the amount of land per per person like you mentioned. Plenty of other countries live on ~1 acre/person w/o the same corruption seen in Haiti, and they're fine w/ that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
But it's not primarily consumption. Six billion people are going to screw up the planet, even if they all live as frugally as Gandhi. Indeed, some of the worst environmental degradation happens where per-capita incomes are lowest, such as sub-Saharan Africa.
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That's not true. We have ~1 billion people causing the same environmental impact as ~5+ billion.
The environmental impact of the high income countries is greater than the impact of the all the middle and low income countries combined. If we broke it up according to rich/everyone else and ignored borders we would probably see half a billion consuming as much as 5.5+ billion. If we could somehow remove 1 billion poor people it would barely make a dent in our environmental impact, but if we removed 1 billion rich people it would cut our environmental impact on the world in half. If that's not a consumption issue, I dunno what is. If everyone had similar per capita consumption levels then I'd be inclined to agree, but we don't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
Haiti's a good example, expecially when compared to the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispanola. The DR has lower population density, a per capita income (which I think is a good proxy for consumption) more than six times that of Haiti ($8100 vs $1300), and far better environmental quality.
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Japan and many other countries have much higher population density than the DR, more or less on par w/ Haiti, and they have none of the problems Haiti has. Like I said before, Haiti's problems are because they are the most corrupt country in the world or one of the most corrupt countries in the world, not due to population density. There are many other countries that have similar population densities and don't have all the issues Haiti has. They also aren't as corrupt by a long shot.