From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Aug 11 2003 - 08:18:31 MDT
On Mon, 11 Aug 2003, Amara Graps wrote:
> The environmental index tries to capture how much rich countries
> deplete global environmental resources, for example by measuring
> greenhouse-gas emission per head. It also looks at their
> contributions to clean technology and commitment to environmental
> treaties. U.S. came out at the bottom, but The Economist points out
> that it didn't consider investment in pharmaceutical or agricultural
> research, where the U.S.'s contribution is significant.
Interesting note Amara. However, any "environmental index" that
does not take into account biotechnology and nanotechnology funding
is biased. They will make a *significant* impact on the long term
benefits to countries around the world. These will include pollution
reduction, clean water, better crops (the potato blight problem
recently got the benefit of a genetic engineering solution),
improvements in world health (look at the largely U.S. and European
efforts to sequence all of the genomes involved in the organisms
involved in malaria), etc.
So not all "foreign aid" is best judged by the amount of funding
sent offshore. I will admit that an "onshore" approach does not
help foreign countries "now" so one would need some kind of
discounted present value analysis which may be difficult.
Robert
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