Solving the Riddle of Development: An Economist's View

All over the globe, developing countries are caught in an ever-tightening spiral of ecological destruction that is one of the most urgent environmental problems of our time. These nations are mining their minerals, cutting and burning their forests, extracting their oil, and shipping out raw or nearly raw materials to the developed countries as fast as they can-often squandering resources that could be better used domestically-in a losing race for export revenues and foreign capital to industrialize and to pay off their enormous debts. In the process, environmental costs are ignored, and catastrophic environmental damage is commonplace. Yet this pathological path of development is precisely the one recommended by traditional economic thought.