Pollution

José Pablo Zambrano Ramírez
Additional contact information
José Pablo Zambrano Ramírez: University of Melbourne, Australia

Chapter 22 in Handbook on International Political Economy, 2012, pp 375-394 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: AbstractDuring the 1980s several Beluga whales were found dead in the waters off the coast of the Quebec Province, Canada. In their blubber was found a high concentration of DDT (i.e. dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, a very powerful insecticide used for agriculture that was banned throughout the world during the 1960s and 1970s because of its harmful effects on the environment and human health); plus PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls, a long-lived industrial compound used mainly in the manufacture of electronic goods); and Mirex (a chlorinated hydrocarbon that is used mainly as an insecticide for agricultural purposes and that was subsequently banned because of its bio-accumulative effects). All of these compounds degrade slowly. They linger in the environment, floating in the air and water, permeating the soil, and accumulating in animal fats. For this reason they are banned in most developed countries and for this reason the whales cited above were disposed of as toxic waste. Furthermore, the Quebec authorities label living whales as "toxic waste" too (Prins, 1991, p. 16). (This incident motivated Prins to write a book entitled Top Guns and Toxic Whales in which she highlighted the tensions between the dominant narrative of security and the world's politico-economic system.)…

Keywords: Political Economy; International Political Economy; Industrial Revolution; Liberal Capitalism; Markets; Production; Consumption; Trade; Finance; Globalization; Work; North/South; Gender; Environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814366984_0022 (application/pdf)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789814366984_0022 (text/html)
Ebook Access is available upon purchase.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:wschap:9789814366984_0022

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in World Scientific Book Chapters from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().