The waters were polluted, and would still be polluted without the wealth creation of the free market that frees us up to care about pollution. All sorts of poorer countries, and a number of communist countries, had laws about pollution, just having a law doesn't get it done.
Its even more true when you move from environmental concerns, to the well being of workers. Yes in earlier stages of development there are sweat shops but people flock to them because they represent a stage up. Then where more wealth is created economies move away from such things. And no its not mostly a matter of laws. If less free and poorer countries pass such laws earlier in their development the laws get ignored, or the inspectors get bribed, or in the unlikely event they actually have very tight laws very strictly enforced, they damage their own development, and keep people in poverty. Even for the US, look at workplace safety. OSHA likes to display a chart of workplace deaths dropping sharply since they where created. The facts behind the chart are true, but misleading. Yes death dropped sharply after OSHA started, and they where dropping just as sharply before its creation.
Getting back to the environment - The worst environmental destruction has been in the relatively developed countries that were least economically free, for example in the Soviet Union, not in places like the US. |
