Agency Measures – Science Poetry

What sparkle
Not always clean –
Record polish
with soot from elsewhere.
A city clearance
Its throat
Residue,
smoke
Thread
On the freighter route,
Entering the lungs
No voting
Used for policy
Or promise.
somewhere,
Kiln breathing
At the price of others:
Ash-Maker,
Rent the sky –
Dirty job
Virtue used for signaling.
still
The numbers rise,
Stack like crates
Under the banner
That will never leave
Its shore.

The poem is inspired by recent research that found that democracies generally look greener because they are offshore pollution to less democratic countries.

Although democracies are generally believed to protect the environment better than authoritarian regimes, the picture is more complicated than what was originally seen. Many studies have proposed this link, but the evidence is mixed and key issues remain. One less-watched issue is the way countries transfer the environmental costs of consumption elsewhere. In a global economy, it is possible that wealthier democracies are simply because the environmental damage associated with their lifestyles is far beyond their borders.

The study examines this pattern more closely by examining data on greenhouse gas emissions, planting under pollution and democracy levels in more than 160 countries since the 1990s. The findings show that democracies are often able to maintain a clearer domestic record by outsourcing the environmental impacts of consumption to other democracies. In other words, the obvious environmental success of a democracies may be paid elsewhere. These results challenge the notion that democracy alone leads to better environmental outcomes and suggest that truly sustainable policies must explain the global consequences of local action.