iate. In sum, China’s environment, and those of other countries, should only be of concern to the United States when its improvement or degradation can be linked convincingly to American economic or security interests. Environmental Policy: Domestic Affair or a Global Issue? A frequent source of friction in North-South relations is disagreement over environmental policy-making. Some argue that prioritizing environmental impacts is a nation’s prerogative.This position stems from the belief that economicgrowth would be stunted if developing countrieswere forced to adopt stricter environmental standards or rely on expensive, more environmentally-friendly technologies. They would also argue that since environmental policies should be a domestic matter, attempts by developed nations to dictate an environmental agenda impinges on the rights of developing countries as sovereign nations and is an example of hypocritical “environmental colonialism.” An illustration of this hypocrisy is a recent World Resources Institute study that scapegoats countries such as China and India for producing between 10 and 30 percent of the world’s atmospheric pollution. This study concluded that the key to solving this problem is getting developing countries, in general, to curb their output of air pollutants. However, it could be argued that since China and India account for about 40 percent of the world’s population, they should be entitled to emit an equal portion of the world’s air pollution. Calculated in terms of share of the world’s population, countries such as Canada and Australia far exceed their fair allotment of pollution (Agarwal and Narain, 1995). Proponents of this view argue that the developed world ignores the environmental damage it caused during the early stages of its own development, and the disproportionate share of pollution and resource consumption accounted for by its citizens. The above cl...
