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One of our dirty secrets is that we in the West improved our own local environment by shipping off all the polluting industries to somewhere else, preferably overseas.

While all of your points are valid and I believe we should stop being deferential to China (including on topics like Taiwan), their pollution is our pollution, too, at least partly so.

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Agreed and per person the Chinese actually pollute less than Americans.

Same with NYC vs all of Nebraska. Per person, sure NYC is very low as most of the 8 million citizens use public transportation. But the number of trucks and busses bringing people and goods into the city still results in a huge amount of pollution. Also the heating and cooling for buildings that are hundred+ years old or super tall structures.

In comparison, Nebraska has a small population but they have a thing for trucks and no subway. Less pollution overall but more per person.

china overproduces things and trade dumps on other countries because of local government quota and made-up numbers for GDP. that's not a country we want to produce goods for the long term. buying from democratic countries would be a good start

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