Wealthier is healthier?

They say globalization is bad for the environment, but not according to this chart I got from the EPI website. The EPI measures environmental results at the natural level, gauging air and water quality, greenhouse emissions and land protection. It was designed to permit cross-national comparisons of the effect of government policies on the environment and includes both measures of current environmental performance and rates of improvement.

"Wealthier is healthier" says this chart, which shows the top globalizing countries in the world, with high environmental protection.

Is this true?

Of course, in order to have environmental sustainability, there has to be economic sustainability. Increasing wealth and affluence is required for environmental improvement to occur. Economic growth pollutes & damages the envionment initially, but will help the environment to recover with new wealth & technology.

Wealth changes consumer demand for environmental quality as big companies fight to maintain high environmental standards, like increasing concern for safer drinking water and cleaner environment like proper sewage disposal. The rise in financial resources means that people can create the technology to ensure environmental protection, and can even impose appropriate rules on polluters.

According to the WTO, the lack of environmental protection usually happens in countries with low income. Economic progress will reduce health problems like poverty and will enable countries to shift from entertaining immediate concerns to focusing on long-term sustainability.

This shows that economic growth can promote environmental sustanability in the long run.

However, I think that the question is, how long would we have to wait to reach that point of environmental utopia, a world where technology and the whales live hand in hand?

Although now statistics show that those rapidly globalizing countries maintain high environmental protection, there is still a possibility that globalization and environmental protection are not directly linked to eachother. In my opinion, it is the highly globalized countries that stand superior to the low-income countries, giving them the authority to bully the less-fortunate countries.


I do not believe that all large companies dispose of their wastes properly, because that would mean an economic suicide on their part. Instead, they dump them onto the smaller companies, powerless and unable to do anything but do the dirty work for the giants. This way, we maintain the notorious label associated with globalization, "The rich gets richer, the poor gets poorer".

The bigger corporations continue being big because they do not have to bother about their unwanted materials and economic crises, and at the same time put on a mask about their perfect environmental protection. Whereas the small companies clean up the mess of the big ones and get less global recognition.

Is this the reality behind the numbers and figures on the chart?


Bibliography
http://www.atkearney.com/shared_res/pdf/Measuring_Globalization_S.pdf