... they merely exported it, along with the industries and jobs which formerly produced pollution in the USA. So instead of still having US jobs and US industries emitting 'small' amounts of pollution with reasonable and practical environmental regulations in place (versus the EPA mandated 'minute' amounts of pollution - super low emission levels requiring prohibitively expensive equipment to comply), those industries relocated to China. However, without even basic pollution controls enforcement, Chinese industries are now belching out huge amounts of pollution which will eventually blow or float its way back to the US anyhow.
(snip)
(picture) Smoke belches from a chimney in heavy fog on December 14, 2004 in Beijing, China.
(caption) 60% of Chinese cities have serious air pollution problems
"The report said China's massive appetite for goods ranging from grain to platinum had placed it "at the centre of the world raw materials economy".
One of these raw materials is wood - and the illegal trade in stolen timber is stripping Asia of its last substantial forests, according to a report by the US and UK-based Environmental Investigations Agency and Indonesian campaigning group Telapak.
Indonesia is now suffering the fastest rate of deforestation in the world, losing a wooded area the size of Switzerland every year.
According to investigators, Chinese factories process one stolen Indonesian log every minute of every working day.
Deforestation is not the only unwanted consequence of China's huge consumption of natural materials, says the BBC's Louisa Lim in Beijing.
Coal-fired power plants supply much of the country's energy and according to government estimates, 60% of Chinese cities have serious air pollution problems, she says.
The Kyoto Protocol considers China a developing nation, and it is currently exempt from cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Experts also say that more than three-quarters of the water flowing through China's cities is unsuitable for drinking because of pollution from industrial waste, according to our correspondent.
Scores of rivers have dried up and water tables are getting ever lower.
An official from the Chinese environmental watchdog, Panyue, said the nation's resources and its environment had already reached the limits of their capacity to cope.
Initial moves are now being taken to enforce environmental laws, but moves in this direction could ignite new tensions between government agencies and big business."



) of these systems (or incentives on fossil fuels are removed) your prediction may not be true. 
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