Eco echoes: a bad case for arrested development

Environmental groups last week gave new meaning to the old slogan "reuse and recycle." In the aftermath of the tsunami disaster, many were spotted trying to capitalize on the headlines to call attention to their old saws on climate change.

The controversy was catalyzed by a series of quotes such as one from a Greenpeace spokesman, who said an increase in "so-called natural disasters [was] no more natural than a plastic Christmas tree."

Similar talk has been heard from other eco groups, though they always clarify that they don't mean the earthquake in the Indian Ocean was caused by global warming, er, exactly. The message instead is worse: Poor countries are unwise to aspire to join the industrialized world, and their "natural" disasters are a comeuppance for buying into the desirability of economic progress.

By developing along their coastlines, for instance, villagers of Thailand and Indonesia allegedly destroyed nature's best defenses against tsunamis — coral reefs and natural tidebreaks in the form of shoreline plants. Hotels and shrimp farms that bring revenue to the poorer coastal communities, you see, are accomplices of nature's destructive power. Now aren't you sorry you didn't listen to us?

This is not a new argument ginned up just for the occasion, however. Last August, an environmental group sued the Indonesian government after a river flooded parts of North Sumatra, killing 200 people. Illegal logging of protected woodlands was blamed for exposing villagers to unnecessary danger. The 2002 landslides in Kenya that drove hundreds of thousands out of their homes were similarly blamed on deforestation.

The message this chorus sends to poor countries is that they should eschew the businesses that involve Western capital and trade. Funny how completely it ignores the evidence and their own human experience. Development may have costs, but it undoubtedly leaves people better off. Wealth buys longer life, better health and a cleaner, better-protected environment. Coral reefs may save lives in a tsunami. But they don't save nearly as many lives as technology and development do.

There was a time, recall, when most natural disasters were unsurvivable and unpredictable — they came without warning and wiped out whole swaths of communities. In 1959, floods in China killed 2 million. As recently as 1970, 300,000 died in floods in Bangladesh. But natural disasters that hit the developed world seldom even make the list anymore. The Great Lisbon earthquake killed an estimated 30,000, but that was in 1755.

Through science, progress and early warning, we've managed to find some shelter from nature's wrath when it happens. We fly airplanes into the middle of hurricanes, stick seismic devices into the Earth's core to register tremors, and can watch video meteorology reports from our wireless laptops in the local coffee shop.

Environmentalists have correctly noted that 96 percent of deaths from natural disasters now occur in the developing world, and that poor, Caribbean countries suffer far worse injury and death rates from the same hurricanes that also batter Florida. Yet, somehow they conclude this is the fault of the developed world for being developed, not a sign that poor countries would be better off if they developed, too.

The World Wildlife Fund once even proposed an income-redistribution scheme to compensate poor countries for natural disasters "caused" by industrialized countries. Under this theory, countries such as the United States would be required to pay off less-developed nations that suffered the greater burdens of climate change such as "extreme weather events."

"If the U.S. tobacco industry can be held responsible for smoking-related deaths and illnesses and ordered to pay very hefty fines, wealthy countries must be held responsible in some way for the contribution that their carbon pollution is almost certainly making to recent droughts and floods," said the fund's Jennifer Morgan.

At the heart of many environmentalists' complaint is the belief that the U.S., as a global economic force, is somehow responsible even for the weather. Dan Becker, the Sierra Club's spokesman on global warming, described the Bush administration's attitude toward human causes of climate change as "ranging between ostrich-like and flat-Earth."

But happily, no part of the world is less impressed with this message than the corner of the world where the tsunamis landed. The economies of Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and even (despite its civil war) Sri Lanka have not earned the title "tigers" for nothing.

In fact, the most hopeful theme from the morass of appalling news this past week is that the tsunami region would not likely suffer long-term economic damage. Local stock markets were barely fazed by the disaster. Globalization is too entrenched. The tourists will come back, and because they will, the capital will be available to rebuild hotels and resorts. Their labor forces remain educated, disciplined and ambitious, so factories will be rebuilt to take advantage of their energies.

For those who survived the tragedy, globalization itself will be one of the biggest forces contributing to their rapid recovery from the disaster. Now if only the environmentalists could figure this out, too.

Collin Levey writes Fridays for editorial pages of The Times. E-mail her at clevey@seattletimes.com