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Comment by jajag | Hacker News Reader

A lot of that air pollution is emitted producing products for the US & European markets.

Exactly. It's pollution that we directly benefit from, it's not fair to think our countries are better at the protecting the environment when everything we buy is made there instead of having the dirty factories/industries in our own countries.

It's interesting seeing how the Right is changing it's rhetoric as public opinion changes.

A few years ago it was "this isn't happening" now it's "these other people do it far worse than we do."

True, the right has been in outright denial of the facts, but the left has also been in denial about the contribution its policies have to the problem - they after all have been the cheerleaders for globalisation. No one is going to come out of this smelling of roses.

The "Left" (not the democrats) was not a cheerleader for globalization.

I also don't buy that if everyone was producing at smaller scales at home, this problem would be at all better. This is a consumption problem, not a "globalization" problem.

Ok, what counts as the "left" in the US and most European countries promoted globalization - the unreconstituted hard left, sure, not so much.

I agree with you that this is a consumption problem, but globalization is what has driven consumption for the past 30 years.

What? It’s the right in almost every country that has promoted globalization. Labor parties around the world, and the democrats in the US up until Bill Clinton, were staunchly opposed.

> democrats in the US up until Bill Clinton, were staunchly opposed.

That's a hell of a caveat.

Shrug, parties change. The democrats ceased to be a party of the left by any measure from 1992-2016. That’s just about a quarter century. Clinton took the party hard right.

The “right” in the US is now staunchly in favor of trade wars instead of free trade. Not what you’d expect given their history.

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