Paying the True Cost

I and many others have written about the need for economic goods to include all the real costs of production - including environmental costs. Here's a great demonstration of what goes wrong if you don't:

"The West moved its manufacturing base to China knowing it was vastly more polluting than Japan, Europe or the US," he added.

"No environmental conditions were attached to this move; in fact the only thing manufacturers were interested in was the price of labour.

"This trend kept the price of our products down but at the cost of soaring greenhouse gas emissions. Long term, this policy has been a climate disaster.

Nominal price goes down, environmental cost goes up. If the latter were factored in, China would not be so eager to employ production techniques that poison its own land and people.