Yesterday's post, at over 3,000 words, was - to put it kindly - epic. Today, therefore, let me be short but sweet.

The popular press has recently been filled with tut-tutting about about Beijing's heinous smog problem and how it will a) harm endurance athletes participating in the upcoming Olympics, 2) embarrass the Chinese government after they had promised "blue skies," and iii) prove that environmentally reckless "emerging economies" are the worst offenders when it comes to inducing climate change.

Uh, excuse me?

Let's take a look at ourselves for a moment. Who exactly is buying all those products that China (and India) are producing? Who has abandoned their dirtiest industrial activities, knowing that they'd be picked up by the aforementioned emerging economies? Whose economies would go south without the manufacturing that's causing Beijing's pollution to be so bad that seeing further than a block or two down a residential street is considered a good day?

Yup. Us.

So don't look too far down your nose at the pollution caused by the rising industrial power of emerging economies. Look, instead, at the "Made in China" tag on most of the consumer goods you've bought in the past few years, and know that your carbon footprint is stomping across China and India.

That hazy sky you're going to see when you tune into Olympic coverage next week? You're paying China to endure it so that you don't have to.

We're all in this together, folks, and the sooner we realize that climate change has zero, zip, squat, and nada respect for international boundries, the sooner we'll be able to make some rational progress towards ameliorating its effects - globally.

By the way, if you have a free moment or three, you might find it interesting to do a bit of reading about how the West handled the environmental problems caused by its own emergence as an industrial power. [back to top]

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