ABSTRACT
On December 12, 1991, Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank, sent a memorandum to some of his colleagues presenting views on the environment that are doubtless widespread among orthodox economists, reflecting as they do the logic of capital accumulation, but that are seldom offered up for public scrutiny and then almost never by an economist of Summers's rank. The World Bank later told The Economist that in writing his memo Summers had intended to "provoke debate" among his bank colleagues, and Summers himself said that he had not meant to advocate "the dumping of untreated toxic wastes near the homes of poor people". Summers's argument for dumping toxic wastes in the Third World is therefore nothing more than a call for the globalization of policies and practices that are already evident in the United States and that have recently been unearthed in locations throughout the capitalist world.
