Lawrence Summers

Lawrence Henry Summers (born the November 30th 1954 with New Haven with the the United States), is an economist and American Politician . 71 {{E}} Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury of the United States of 1999 with 2001.

President of the University Harvard of 2001 with 2006. He resigned after having held of the polemical remarks on several discussed subjects.

Lawrence Summers said:

" The under-populated countries of Africa under-are largely polluted. The quality of the air is there of an unnecessarily high level compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City It is necessary to encourage a more important migration of polluting industries towards the least advanced countries and to be worried more factor worsening the risks of a cancer of the prostate in a country where people live enough old to have this disease, which in another country where two hundred children out of thousand die before having the five years age. The calculation of the cost of a dangerous pollution for health depends on the profits absorptive by the increase in morbidity and mortality. From this point of view, a certain amount of pollution should exist in the countries where this cost is weakest, in other words where the wages are lowest. I think that the economic logic which wants that masses of toxic waste are poured where wages are weakest is imparable."

Source: Lawrence Summers, Note interns of the World Bank, December 12th, 1991. Extracts quoted by The Economist, February 8th, 1992, and by Financial Times, February 10th, 1992, reproduced in international Mail, n° 68, February 20th, 1992. Begun again by E. Fottorino, “ecology for the development”, Le Monde, May 19th, 1992

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