Generally because environmentalism is luxury for wealthy countries. When you stack up carcinogens that may or may not kill you in four decades against feeding your family today, the food will always win.
I disagree; the laws are lax because oligarchies in developing countries typically don't get harmed by dangerous working conditions. The people with the power to enforce safe workplace laws have no external incentive; it is at odds with maximizing their cut of the revenue.
> ...laws are lax because oligarchies in developing countries typically don't get harmed by dangerous working conditions.
This holds true even for developed nations. If a particular company or industry can skirt workers rights, environmental laws, etc. and bear the impact as merely a negative return, they will.
> The people with the power to enforce safe workplace laws have no external incentive...
Right, and the only force which affects such oligarchies is unionization. However, as gozur88 said above, feeding your family is more important than any potential health impacts. And when you're in a situation where thousands of others will gladly assume your position, regardless of the cost, there is no feasibly to unionized striking.
Unionization fails when an oligarchy can reliably imprison union leaders. Looking at the track record of developing countries, this is the typical path, not a lack of interest by local workers.
The problem is environmental regulations raise the cost of doing business. Which is fine, if you live in a place like the US, say, or Australia. But if you live in a country where people are already going hungry, a small increase in costs means people on the margins are going to literally starve to death.
"In China" was implied, not that I'm convinced that there was great environmental concern before that, even if the means to pollute were lacking compared to the post-Industrial Revolution west.
> It seems that you're implying blatent disregard for the environment and pollution began (and possibly ended) in China.
Absolutely not. What I am saying is that the protection of environment was not, until recent times, particularly high on the agenda of the Chinese government (and that the Maoist period was particularly terrible in this regard).
Obviously, the West, being the first to be industrialized, has been responsible for most of the global pollution until now (and by outsourcing some of its most polluting industries to China, has also a share of responsibility for the pollution in China).
