sure, one could talk about the global economy as if it were somehow a single entity, but doing so doesn't make it logical. economic experiences can, at best, be generalized into region-specific entities. now, these different pieces occassionally act in unison (ex. the EU and japan taking concerted action to articificially appreciate our dollar), but it still can't be simplified into a single system - one which the author's theory depends on.
we did something that was never done before with cambodia during the clinton administration. that is, we linked a trade agreement up with labor and environmental standards in exchange for a guaranteed quota for cambodian textile imports. long story short, this agreement produced substantial growth in cambodia in the short-run. but in the long-run, they are having problems funding their capital account, and their textile industry is not competitive. linking environmental rules could, possibly, only work so long as everyone was forced to develop the exact same way.. and that is never going to happen so long as the sovereign state exists.
the best way to reverse something like global warming is to develop competitve clean air technology that can be used to replace engines running on fossil fuels.. the best place for said technology to be created is in developed countries. we should be a leader in this research, but we're probably dead last amongst other developed countries. we would develop the technology, perfect it, commoditize it and then developing countries would be able to use it.
as far as africa goes, we discussed that specific issue at some length here:
How To Make it With Chicks in Africa
we do live in a global economy, but the one-size fits-all approach has already been tried (by the IMF) and has been proven time and time again to be a bad idea. when you get healthy local economies, particularly in the developing world, you end up with a healthy national economy.
(p.s. i'm also a student - going for my master's in intl economics)