Here is how America is making the Third World a better place with Globalism. Congratulations! [View all]

[Zalatix]

America uses 30% of the world's resources, so we need to send more jobs overseas.

So, let's take a look at all the great things we're doing for the poor outside of America by outsourcing our jobs!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/world/asia/beijing-journal-anger-grows-over-air-pollution-in-china.html

The ceaseless churning of factories and automobile engines in and around Beijing has led to this: hundreds of flights canceled since Sunday because of smog, stores sold out of face masks, and many Chinese complaining on the Internet that officials are failing to level with them about air quality or make any improvements to the environment.

http://www.salon.com/2006/04/10/ewaste/

More than 50 percent of our recycled computers are shipped overseas, where their toxic components are polluting poor communities. Meanwhile, U.S. laws are a mess, and industry and Congress are resisting efforts to stem "the effluent of the affluent."

A parade of trucks piled with worn-out computers and electronic equipment pulls away from container ships docked at the port of Taizhou in the Zhejiang Province of southeastern China. A short distance inland, the trucks dump their loads in what looks like an enormous parking lot. Pools of dark oily liquid seep from under the mounds of junked machinery. The equipment comes mostly from the United States, Europe and Japan.

For years, developed countries have been exporting tons of electronic waste to China for inexpensive, labor-intensive recycling and disposal. Since 2000, it’s been illegal to import electronic waste into China for this kind of environmentally unsound recycling. But tons of debris are smuggled in with legitimate imports, corruption is common among local officials, and China’s appetite for scrap is so enormous that the shipments just keep on coming

http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/collaboration/2007/summer/outsourcing-pollution.shtml

Rising U.S. Trade May Increase Carbon Emissions

A rise in global trade has researchers wondering about the potential impact on future climate policy.

A recent Carnegie Mellon study finds that the United States may be reducing its own carbon emissions by importing goods from countries that are creating even more emissions in the production process than the United States would have originally.

Making a desktop computer in China, for example, can generate up to three times the carbon dioxide emissions as making the same desktop computer in the United States.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-vine/how-big-deal-outsourced-pollution

How Big A Deal Is Outsourced Pollution?

It's fairly straightforward to measure how much carbon dioxide a given country is emitting within its own borders. Just count the factories and power plants and cars and so forth and tally up all that pollution. But what about outsourced emissions? After all, the United States and Europe consume a whole bunch of goods manufactured overseas, and those emissions usually get chalked up to developing countries like China. So who bears the responsibility here?

It's a dicey question, though the first step is to get a handle on how much carbon pollution actually gets outsourced. And the answer seems to be: quite a bit. A new study by Steven Davis and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science finds that the United States outsources about 11 percent of its emissions abroad, while Japan outsources nearly 18 percent and European nations outsource anywhere from 20 percent to 50 percent of their emissions—most of it to developing countries. On the flip side, nearly one-quarter of China's emissions, for instance, go into making goods for other countries.

Outsourcing Global Pollution to India - Vandana Shiva

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/08/19/us_castoffs_resuming_dirty_career/

TURNERS FALLS -- Some townspeople in this 19th-century mill village on the Connecticut River celebrated when workers began tearing down a shuttered coal-fired power plant this year. First, they dismantled the towering boiler. In June, the smokestack that belched hundreds of thousands of tons of heat-trapping gases into the air came down. Last month, workers hauled away the five-story steel skeleton, leaving just a concrete silo as a reminder of this local icon of global warming.

But the demolition is hardly a victory in the battle against manmade climate change.

Virtually every piece of the 2,600-ton plant is being shipped to Guatemala to be rebuilt, girder by girder, to power a textile mill that sells pants, shirts, and sportswear to the United States. It could last, and continue to pollute, for another 50 years.

From 4-ton trucks to 40-ton boilers, US vehicles and equipment are finding a second life in developing countries -- postponing meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by inefficiently using energy or directly emitting carbon dioxide.

http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/the-hypocrisy-of-outsourcing-pollution.html

Joseph Kahn and Mark Landler of the New York Times do a great job of reporting on the dirty little secret: the west is getting cleaner air and generating less greenhouse gas because we have outsourced it to China. They follow a major steel plant in Dortmund, where ThyssenKrupp sold it to the Chinese, who came over and dismantled it, and reassembled it in Handan. "They worked day and night," said Erwin Schneider, a spokesman for ThyssenKrupp. "They could never have done it that fast if they were governed by German labor laws."

Now Dortmund, which went through a bit of a recession as it lost 40,000 steelmaking jobs, has a performing arts complex being built out of two old blast furnaces, and the Ruhr is a capital of culture. In Essen, a depleted coal mine has been converted into a museum and performing-arts center. In Bochum, a 105-year-old gas-fired power plant is now used as a concert hall, its vaulted roof providing professional-quality acoustics.

In Handan, citizens "live in a miasma of dust and smoke that environmental authorities acknowledge contains numerous carcinogens....People do not eat outdoors, to avoid having black briquettes flake their rice."Hangang knocks 10 years off people's lives."

The next time we pat ourselves on the back for reducing carbon emissions or complain about China, we should look in the mirror first; on a global scale we haven't reduced anything, we just moved it.

The next time you meet someone who believes in globalism, be sure to share these proud achievements of "free trade" with them!
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