unspeakablehorror | Outsourced Ecocide (Reply)

I always find the claim that India or China is the main problem when it comes to environmental devastation odd. This ignores the long (and continuing) history of extractionism from those countries by richer ones like the US. Especially (though definitely not only) the US. It ignores the fact that the environmental devastation wreaked by rich and powerful governments is not confined to the borders of their own countries. It ignores the much lower per capita resource use of countries like India or China. It ignores who ultimately gains the lion's share of the benefits from the products produced there, produced with that worst of the worst of environmental pollutants, coal, and who bears the full brunt of those costs. It ignores what happens to the trash of the powerful when it is called 'recycling'.

This is not to say that the problems in either of these (or any other) country is caused solely by the US or any other rich country. But it is to say that enough of the environmental ones are that it is farcical to claim that, say, the US is more environmentally friendly than they are.