Globalization destroys the environment

The argument

The environmental case against globalization runs through consumption. Globalization increases international trade, and the effect of that trade is to lower prices and raise wages, outcomes usually counted among its benefits. But cheaper goods and larger incomes act on demand in the same direction: together they mean that more people can afford more things, and the demand for consumer goods rises accordingly. That demand has to be met somewhere, and meeting it is a physical process. Manufacturers increase production to match it, and increased production involves the exploitation of more raw materials than before. Every additional unit of output traces back to something taken out of the ground or cut down, so a rise in consumption translates fairly directly into a larger draw on the earth and its resources rather than being absorbed by efficiency. The burden falls on the natural systems that supply the inputs. Deforestation in the Amazon illustrates the chain at work. Increased demand for timber does not stay a matter of prices and orders; it becomes forest that is standing one year and gone the next, because the only way to supply more timber is to cut more trees. What appears in economic terms as a market responding efficiently to consumer preference appears on the ground as the removal of a forest. This is why the environmental consequences cannot be treated as a separate matter from globalization's economic performance. The lower prices and higher wages are not accidental features that happen to coexist with environmental damage; they are the mechanism producing it, because it is precisely by making goods cheaper and consumers richer that globalization drives the consumption the extraction serves. If we care about the environment, then we must consider these effects as part of globalization itself, and on this view globalization is bad.

Context

Globalization increases global consumer demand. This sparks an increase in production to meet demand. Increased production means increased pressure on the environment and the faster depletion of natural resources.

Premises

Counter-arguments

If globalization contributes to environmental degradation, then periods of deglobalization would coincide with periods of reduced environmental destruction. This is not what happens. Since 2008, the globe has been on deglobalization trend. Brexit, Donald Trump's trade war with China and opposition to multinational trade agreements are all indications of anti-globalization sentiment reflected in protectionist policy. But this period of protectionism has not coincided with a period of reduced environmental destruction.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P4] When globalization recedes, environmental degradation does not slow.