this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
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The average consumer doesn't actually have a choice in the matter. Unless you are wealthy enough to purchase only local artisan made goods near everything you can afford is made in China or made in China adjacent.
That's not really the point. The point is their emissions will be higher because they're producing all the stuff everyone else purchases. The production is what creates pollution. If they stopped producing then other countries would and they would increase their pollution.
It's not saying don't buy products from China. It's saying China polluted because things are bought from them. The pollution would be wherever production is taking place.
That is exactly my point. Thanks for elaborating it!
Did you forget about the existence of regulations to control the pollution that manufacturing is allowed to produce? How about the countries who are allowing pollution to happen on a ridiculous scale fix their environmental regulations? It's not like they are under the rule of the USA and have to pollute because we say so.
You could simply not purchase as much crap. Half of the factories that supply the West's goods would go out of business if people stopped buying new phones and shitty plastics every full moon.
Oh no, that's the freedom way. Gods forbid, they'd be living like the bland Soviet blocks otherwise.
Please don't exaggerate, to live like in late USSR you'd have to literally outlaw local non-state production.
They'd be living just fine. Everything would be more expensive, but with the way prices are connected to power balance and cheap Chinese workers affecting that balance on the side of producers, maybe not as expensive as people imagine.
They do. I boycott Chinese made goods, and I don't make much money. It just requires a small amount of introspection on if I need the item. It has actually turned out I buy much much less because what I do buy is of quality and lasts.
Cosmetics, Household goods and food are easy and generally fairly locally made and produced, unless you insist on buying exotic fruits or stuff way out of season.
Clothes, shoes, anything fabric, again easy. Massive market of quality eco-friendly EU/US/UK made stuff that means I pay $30 for a lovely shirt that will last me decades than $5 a shirt that was made by a child in Myanmar and fall apart within the year. So I am slowly developing a modest wardrobe of high quality natural fibres.
You don't really need much else. But it just takes a moment to Google and consume conscientiously.
Some stuff is nearly impossible and is actually outside of your control like fuel and SOME electrical devices. But nothing can be perfect.
Then you cannot complain about corporations moving jobs overseas. Clearly was the only way for the society to survive.
Just remove "made in China" from your basket. And buy just what you need. It's my a good beginning.
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
If I don't need it to work or live I don't buy it from places I know have a slave labor issue or any other ethics concerns.
Another thing that help, ad block. Honestly advertising is brain rot and why a lot of people feel a compulsion to buy land fill filler.