Outsourcing the mess

China and other rising economies are increasingly on the receiving end of outsourced carbon pollution resulting from the purchase of consumer goods by the United States and Europe.

The manufacture, in countries with growing economies, of massive amounts of such popular goods as smartphones and cheap clothing has added to the rapid rise in worldwide greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the UK’s Guardian newspaper. Citing the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Guardian noted that “emissions of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases warming the planet grew twice as fast in the first decade of the 21st century as they did during the previous three decades.”

In related news, the Los Angeles Times reported that pollution created by China’s export industry is wafting across the Pacific Ocean to the U.S.; “Los Angeles and parts of the eastern U.S. experienced at least one extra day of smog that exceeded federal health standards for ozone in 2006 as a result of emissions from export manufacturing in China,” the Times noted.