China Grabs West’s Smoke-Spewing Factories - New York Times

The media thrives on beating up on America to be greener, but the real pollution mess has moved to China. The global economic effect of pollution control in China will be significantly higher prices for manufactured goods. If the West moves rapidly down the path of carbon control, how will the world influence China (and India) to reduce its emissions? Not much leverage when these countries are the world's manufacturing mecca.

My guess is that China and India are in a position to hold the world hostage to pay for cleanup in their countries in coming decades by simply increasing the price of goods they produce.

"This mass shift of polluting industries has blighted China’s economic rise. Double-digit growth rates have done less to improve people’s lives when the damages to the air, land, water and human health are considered, some economists say. Outmoded production equipment will have to be replaced or retrofitted at high cost if the country intends to reduce pollution.

China’s worsening environment has also upended the geopolitics of global warming. It produces and exports so many goods once made in the West that many wealthy countries can boast of declining carbon emissions, even while the world’s overall emissions are rising quickly.

The Ruhr Valley city of Dortmund, where ThyssenKrupp once made steel, still suffers from high unemployment because of the loss of jobs to lower-cost countries like China. But Germans can buy Chinese-made iPods, washing machines and cargo ships at prices that, because of lax pollution controls, do not reflect the toll on the environment. And the outsourcing of polluting industries has given them cleaner air and water."