We are in charge!!  We can not look to others to make changes unless we personally one at a time make the conscious step forward to change our own habits whims and purchasing right now this very minute.

we as individuals have the power of change RIGHT NOW immediately

I don't really buy into that.
We need exponential change, not incremental change.

You'd do far better to contact your congress members (and those groups who speak to congress), then you would be trying to deal with this issue all by yourself.

-David Ahlport

It is so much easier to lower your consumption than to set some flowery percentage goal upstream at some distant future date.  Individually we can do it right now, waiting for 'them' to do at source will take forever all the while individual rates go up.  Cheaper to save a watt than to generate one.

We need both.  Do what you can now and push the big boys at the same time.  So while we'll hear about some clever goals and sometimes actual application we're not making any real strides at all.  For every announcement of a geothermal plant in China (great news) there will be dozens of 19th century coal plants built.

   Unless the developed world puts its money where its mouth is, there will be little progress.

patrick in beijing

Well I must be in the minority because I don't want the crap that is coming from there.  I'll support quality products on the rare occasion I buy anything but it must give me lasting value and hopefully didn't destroy a village and its people to make it.  I have no doubt that those type of products exist and that there are decent people willing to balance profit with good stewardship of this planet.  But I'm afraid those good intentions are outnumbered by corrupt short thinking motives.

You can develop a strong economy while trying to do the right thing for all concerned.  You have to think long term.  There are countries trying to invest in sustainable technologies but I'm afraid they are being shut out by the quick buck alternatives.

So don't mind my finger wagging, perhaps you should wag your finger at your own rulers and demand a healthier planet for the next generation otherwise all that development will be wasted.  Right now I have little faith in the ruling parties on your side of the world and on mine.

     If your customer won't buy at a reasonable price, you have two choices.  Find a way to cut the price, or lose the sale.  If you lose the sale, you may go hungry.  So, often you cut the price as your customer demands.  

     It's good you are ashamed of developed nation behavior (and it is not just East/West, look south).

     But to claim that people are happy to live poorly in a degraded environment to meet you demands is rather silly.  They just don't have any choice.  While the Marie Antoinette school of economics says they can just eat cake, the truth is simpler and nastier.

     Companies in developing nations must meet the demands of their customers to survive.  If their customers demand good labor conditions, fair pay, and sound environmental practices, and are willing to pay prices high enough for that to happen, it will.

      If their customers demand low low prices every day, and to hell with the workers and the environment, that will happen too.

      And if they criticize and demand that poor people spend money they don't have, well, gee, then they have probably never been poor.

      If  you have a plan for developing a strong economy while doing the right thing, and planning for the long term while feeding people in the short term, please publish it!!!  

      FWIW, I am an American.  My rulers sit in Washington planning how to destroy the world.  Sigh.

patrick in Beijing

I wonder who gets the sale if one company in China looses because they choose to play by a more agreeable standard.  The company around the corner that won't play nice.  Again that is something to put to those local officials that are letting it happen.  We learned some lessons long ago and now have some sense of health and safety standards.  And now we've lost most of the manufacturing to China.  Well I say we've merely place shifted the problem.  We should not only obey our own standards but to enforce them on imports.  I don't agree with U.S. doctrine of extending our politics beyond its borders but I would prefer that we enforce our minimal standard on what comes into the country.

I hear about this economic miracle going on so if my people have done anything it is to raise that level of poverty out of the gutter by buying  products by the boatload.  I'm sure that life still sucks for many and perhaps most.  But until I can be confident that a product isn't going to slowly kill me or the poor villager that made it then I'm not buying.  Sorry, I can't support that kind of system.  I want better for my children and believe it or not I want the same for all children of this world.

BTW, I'm a poor person that is lucky enough to live where being poor doesn't always mean starvation.  So I'm 100% better off than half the planet but I have my limits and as such I remain poor.  I'll be happy if they change the name of the Dollar Store to the Two Dollar Store if that means my grandkids will have the chance to live with nature before it is destroyed.

   All developing countries face the same problem.  If they raise their wages and standards too high, the foreign companies threaten to leave (to another developing country).  So, the local official is powerless in the face of this threat.  Especially if they need the jobs to feed people.

   It has nothing to do with corruption, it has everything to do with poverty.  And with a global economic system dominated by large corporations.

   Are Americans responsible for poverty elsewhere?  Certainly most of them have no interest in eliminating it, either in America or anywhere else.  If you don't feel any responsibility for that poverty, how about the poverty in Haiti or Iraq?

   But let's say you're right, you're not responsible.  For the local official, what should they do?  Well, what they do  is try to attract investment and build infrastructure.  That is their idea.  I don't see people offering better ideas.

   When the Chinese government last spring tried to tighten labor standards, all of the foreign companies started muttering "Vietnam".  

   Are Americans responsible when American companies ship toxic waste illegally to China or Africa?  When they lobby Congress to pass laws so that they can sell things in other countries that it is not legal to sell in America?

   In terms of enforcing standards on what enters America, please do!!!  Make sure the manufacturers know the standards ahead of time.  Require American buyers to pay fair prices to meet those standards.  I don't think any foreign country is going to complain about that.

   Of course, the hopelessly corrupt American government won't agree to such a thing unless people speak up.  And the silence of the American  people speaks loudly.

    Refusing to buy anything from anywhere is of course your right.  But you should learn a little more about the places before you write everything off.

    And it might be useful to apply the same standards you have for developing countries to developed countries.  The plight of migrant farmworkers in America needs to be addressed as well as that of poor workers elsewhere in the world.

patrick in Beijing