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Community and Q&A

Should we buy products from China?

Robert Hronek| Posted inGeneral Questionson

ABC did a news piece on the pollution in China. I have thought of this before but it is fresh in the news.

China makes cheap solar panels, but how much of that has to do with the lack of environmental regulations? If we care about the environment, should we buy products that just ship the environmental impact to a foreign land?

The last US lead smelter recently closed down. EPA regulations required expensive new equipment to reduce pollution. We are not going to stop using lead either in the products we manufacture or use. Would it have been better to give tax credits to the US company and produced the lead in a cleaner manner? We can subsidize sports stadiums but we cant keep blue-collar jobs in the US.

I read labels to see where products are made. If I can’t find an American made product I lean to countries that I feel are closer aligned to the US.

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Replies

  1. Expert Member
    Malcolm Taylor||#1

    Welcome to the Keystone pipeline debate.

  2. Robert Hronek||#2

    What does Keystone have to do with it.

  3. Jin Kazama||#3

    Just like the recent article on distric heating from Austria ... we ( canada and usa ) are participating to our societal demise .

    On another note, has any published studies recently surfaced about the production cost
    ( environmentally ) of solar panels ?

  4. Robert Hronek||#4

    Elaborate what you are talking about

  5. Jin Kazama||#5

    Wow i believe i deleted a line on my post ..

    What i meant is to take the austria article as an example of what we should be doing... or what we aren't.

    All i see around here is closing of international factories to relocate elsewhere
    ( some are from USA and i understand how they are bringing stuff back to base,,which is what we should be doing )

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