Hey...I'm not responsible for global warming.  I've got an eco-car, an eco-mansion, I eat free-range-grassfed-organic meat, I buy lots of eco-gadgets, and I buy carbon offsets when I fly to vacation once a month.  If there's anyone who we need to blame for global warming, it's the factory worker in China who's making 8 cents an hour.

...but seriously, another reason to consider manufacturing in the United States; you have control over the outputs and inputs

(No personal attack here, Karsten. Just good ol' disagreement for discussion sake.)

Without us buying the stuff China would still be poor

That is a slippery slope.  Remember, poor is relative.  I don't feel poor because I don't own an iPod.  I feel poor because I cannot afford to buy food.  If Climate Change decimates food sources, we would all be richer without factories.  

Of course you cannot blame them for wanting to live like us.

Uh, yes, 'you' can. And, 'you' can blame us for wanting to live like us, too.  Living to excess is not a genetic predisposition or act of "god"...it is a choice.  

You've heard those stories about how lotto winners implode.  Happens to cultures and civilizations too. Greed and materialism erode the foundation of good values.

Who needs an iPod when you can have humming...for free!

www.NoPunProductions.com ~ AmericaTheGreen.org

Nonetheless, that is a very good point. Just because the U.S. hides a percentage of its carbon emissions in other countries does not mean that the U.S. should not be accountable. We need consumption carbon emissions calculations.

Greta

P.S. -- On who is accountable for that subheading. Yikes!  (--> "Who is accountable for Chinese greenhouse-gas emissions" / better: "Who should be accountable for Chinese greenhouse-gas emissions"; or "To whom should accountable for Chinese greenhouse-gas emissions fall".  ...Just omit the first word ("On") and have a nice day!

www.NoPunProductions.com ~ AmericaTheGreen.org

"To whom should accountability for Chinese greenhouse-gas emissions fall".  

www.NoPunProductions.com ~ AmericaTheGreen.org

OK, Greta, what you say about greed and materialism as morally corrosive factors cannot be said enough.  And Kit does an important accounting job, in connecting a significant amount of Chinese carbon emissions to US manufacturers and consumers.

But let us not assume that if only the Chinese could be liberated from the various compromises that doing business with the West entails, they will return to a pristine state of nature-loving innocence and virtue.

Consider a few animal-welfare-related issues (and "Chinese" in this context means not just the people from China, which the unsufferably vile Lou Dobbs makes a point of calling "Communist China," but also semi-autonomous Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore; and there are large and influential Chinese business communities in many or all of the other Southeast Asian countries):

it is probably true that affluent Chinese have always liked to display their affluence somehow, like affluent people in many other societies; a current device to this end is ordering the very expensive shark-fin soup (see the link to the new documentary "Sharkwater," in Andrew Sharpless's latest "This week in ocean news" post);

the need to supply the pharmacopoeia of traditional Chinese medicine drives an illegal international trade in the body parts of such endangered animals as tigers and rhinoceroses;

probably not exclusively for Western markets (but yes, collectors in the West bear great responsibility), elephant ivory has "value added" by Chinese (and other East Asian) sculptors;

probably not exclusively for Western markets (but yes, Western manufacturers and customers bear great responsibility), fur is flayed from dogs, cats and raccoon dogs, either after the caged animals have been plunged into vats of boiling water, or while they are still alive.

As for the moral blindness that notoriously attends Chinese business interests in Africa, to the best known example of which John Bailo refers, well, that is indeed troubling.  But at least the hypocrisy of Western colonialist enterprises is absent; there is no smug sense of "improving" the very people who are being enslaved and exploited.

Anyway, it would seem that a universal, impartially distributed cynicism is still amply justified.

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

    Thanks Kit for raising an interesting issue.  But, there is a counter side to this issue that usually gets lost.  Bush claims the US has reduced emissions, and folks say that is because of out-sourcing (and not only to China, though China has become the symbolic demon for white America's fears of the developing world).

    But notice something, if the manufacturing has been largely outsourced, then the emissions should have dropped, no??

    Oh wait, they mostly didn't.  That means that Americans have sent their pollution producing factories overseas, but haven't reduced their pollution.

    An amazing task.  Not many Las Vegas magicians could duplicate this.

    It has required tremendous efforts by Americans at all levels to keep CO2 production high in American while at the same time creating new sources of it in other countries!!

    Good....errr.. job... folks..

patrick in Beijing  

   The current civil war in Sudan is not the first in memory, there was an earlier one that went on for many years, but the West never paid much attention (hint, at THAT time, US companies were vying for Sudanese oil, so, ummm, under those circumstances, ummm, human rights don't matter as much).

   2.4 million refugees in Iraq.  Another million or so in Afghanistan.  Haitians starving just off shore from the continental US.  And these are all caused by direct US intervention in other countries affairs.

   If you say the Chinese government if fueling the conflict in Sudan, why not make a list of recent American "genocide" (don't forget Native Americans in the US, who are ever as I type, being robbed of their resource royalties by the US government, a theft that has been going on ever since they were foolish enough to sign treaties with America).

   People have stopped listening to Americans on issues like this.  They used to listen, but the pile of atrocities grew too large.

   Sad, really.

patrick in Beijing

   Sigh.  I was rushing out to teach the migrant kids, and just poured out my poorly spelled words... (moan, groan).  Good thing they were not for an exam, I would fail!!  How embarrassing to read them a few hours later!!!

   (The 5th graders were darling, the 6th are acting up...hormones?)

    A couple of additional points.  The locally made angle is sweet, Jon.  But really, look at all of the superfund sites in the US.  Under what dream conditions do people think that the manufacturing in the US is always clean and green?   Of course, in a typical fashion, the toxic waste could be exported... sigh.

    And Greta, of course you can blame the poor for wanting to be other than poor!!!  And you can blame starving children for starving, and you can blame parents for wanting a better life for their children.  Heck, you can blame me for as many things as you can type!

    However.  

    Merely finding a scapegoat won't change anything.

    And for American Sponsored Global Warming, change needs to begin at home.

patrick in Beijing