THE BELMONT CLUB: Sh** Happens. “Laboratory tests have confirmed that Nepalese UN Peacekeepers accidentally caused the death of 5,000 Haitians from cholera. . . . They came to help and wound up killing thousands. The incident highlights the fragility of an impoverished society. Human communities which live upon the knife’s edge, on the margins of nutrition, with barely adequate medical treatment, with no resources to even track down disease vectors can be blown down by the first perturbation. The Greenies have it wrong. It is not resource abundance but poverty which is unsustainable.”

UPDATE: A reader emails: “The UN isn’t the only problem in Haiti. We tried to build an orphanage there with our lightweight concrete panels and the Haitian government demanded a 200% import duty on the building. We declined to pay–and stayed home, donating our time and money in other places. Unfortunately, poverty is sustainable–by corrupt governments all across the world.”