Dot Earth Blog: Iridescent Rivers, Then (Hudson Valley) and Now (Bangladesh)

The parallels between development and pollution tracks in industrializing poor countries now and the United States half a century ago are remarkable.

Jim Yardley?s story on the iridescent, malodorous effluent from Bangladesh?s factories and mills provides the latest echoes, harking back to Fishkill Creek and the Hudson River, as described to me for a 1996 feature by longtime residents of the Hudson Valley. My Twitter item above leads you to the relevant articles.

I?m going to reach out to historians and others focused on the factors driving environmental cleanups in the past to see if there?s any evidence that today?s polluting nations can somehow accelerate their journey along what some economists call the ?Environmental Kuznets Curve,? a pattern described well in 2003 by David I. Stern, an economist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute:

The environmental Kuznets curve is a hypothesized relationship between various indicators of environmental degradation and income per capita. In the early stages of economic growth degradation and pollution increase, but beyond some level of income per capita (which will vary for different indicators) the trend reverses, so that at high-income levels economic growth leads to environmental improvement.

Source: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/iridescent-rivers-then-hudson-valley-and-now-bangladesh/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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