An article on Yahoo! news today (Link ) reveals one of the biggest polluters in California. It's not our automobiles, not our industry, but China's!

China's? That's right. up to 25% of airborne pollution in California is said to come from China.

And see, as liberals begin quoting Al Gore and his movie "An Inconvenient Truth", they will do so at the expense of the REAL truth: that if global warming is, in fact, caused by our behaviour, then it is wrong to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the United States, as the environmentalists are wont to do. It is a world problem, and until we begin to address it as a world problem, then anything we do to reverse it will be meaningless. This is why the Kyoto protocols were not a good idea: because they would not have affected "developing" nations like India and China, who, we insist, have the right to develop without any consideration for the environment. Ironically, developing countries should be the FIRST place where we implement environmentally sensitive industrial practices, as the economies of these countries have not wholly evolved, and an evolution of their economies on environmentally sensitive practices makes MUCH more sense than their current evolution on environmentally insensitive practices, with a demand that they switch once their economies are fully established.

It is again ironic that much of the environmental movement suggests we "think globally, act locally", and yet, refuses to act on the global problems of pollution, which are more perasive than our own. It is equally confusing that they would decry the outsourcing of jobs, yet ignore the very fact that a key factor in that outsourcing is the lack of environmental regulations in these emerging countries.

If pollution is the pressing, imminent problem that many insist it is, then we must work harder at making developing countries aware of that problem. If "Inconvenient truths" must be faced, they must be faced not only by the US and European community, but by Latin America, South America, Asia, and Africa as well. What is an inconvenient truth for us is an equally inconvenient truth for a family living in Delhi, India.

The problem that many conservatives have with the environmental movement is that they place a heavy burden on the United States, which consistutes about 5% of the world's population, while demanding nothing of the 50% of the world's population that reside in China and India. That burden is costing us jobs, it is costing us housing for the poor, it is costing us quality of life...and in the meantime, it is an endless, vicious cycle, as we are importing not only goods from China, but pollution as well. Until we begin to see emerging nations as bearing equal responsibility for environmental stewardship, it is insane to insist on our own responsibility.