Remember Kyoto? Remember how the Europeans where constantly harping on the U.S. for refusing to sign the Kyoto treaty? Well there was more to that treaty than just controlling green house gases. There was a lot in the treaty that was directly pointed to reigning in U.S. manufacturing and productivity. Rules designed to hurt the U.S. economy and help to prop up emerging economies like China.

Know much of that is a moot point. China is now the number one producer of green house gases. And high wages and labor laws in the U.S. have taken their toll on U.S. competitiveness around the globe. But now the rest of the world is starting to look to China to curb their emissions. Something that China is very reluctant to do.

China's manufacturing prowess is designed around being the cheapest. That means cheap labor, cheap energy, and cheap manufacturing. And China like the U.S. found coal to be the cheapest form of energy. Unlike the U.S. who has spent a lot of time, effort, and treasure into scrubbing coal power plants to make them burn cleaner and in diversifying energy supplies; China has chosen to build their coal plants as cheap as possible. Something that helps to keep their products cheap as well.

When confronted with the enormity of pollution that China is producing, one of their common responses is that the Western Industrial Nations have enjoyed over 100 years of industrial pollution to get to where they are now and that China and other emerging countries should be given a free pass to pollute because of this. A decent sound bite to convince the easily swayed perhaps but when you examine the facts it is really just an excuse.

Think about this. What was the population of the planet in 1900? According to TheDailyGreen.com it was about 1.65 billion. Isn't that about the size of China's population in 2011? So first of all the total industrial output of the U.S., Canada, England, France, Germany, and Russia was no where near what the output of a single country is today. Another problem is that in 1900, we as humans had no idea that our world would grow to a point that we could endanger it through our industrial output. So many of the things that were done in the early years of the industrial revolution were done more out of ignorance than with a purpose.

It took several decades for the general population to become aware of the dangers of our industrial practices and it took a few more decades to generate the will to change them. That day is today and for the Chinese government to pretend that they are not creating a huge problem for their people and the world is a lie. They know what they are doing. To say that China with a population comparable to the entire world in 1900, should be allowed to pollute on a scale unimaginable by the early industrial countries is also a lie.

We know now that we need to take care of the environment better. We know now that the human population has reached a point where we can destroy our planet and ourselves. We know now ways to make coal power plants cleaner. We know now how to harness other forms of energy. China needs to take responsibility of their pollution and take steps to clean up their mess. Even if it means higher operating costs for their factories.

-- Thomas Paine 2

Satellite Tracks Pollution from East Asia