Too Little Pollution

You could almost say that there is too little pollution. With the shut-down of the U.S. economy, we import everything. The global warming, if it exists as a man-made phenomenon, is in the other countries like China and India. The environment is being destroyed there, not here. Oh, what is a greenie and an environmentalist to do?

At the turn of this century, Lyndon LaRouche wrote a warning, that "this presently ongoing collapse of the overblown U.S. financial bubble, will be known as, 'The Demise of the Great Importer of Last Resort.'" (December, 2000, published in EIR, January 19, 2001). The EIR report documented how every necessity, from clothing, to nuts and bolts, to machine tools, were increasingly no longer made in the U.S., but the capability to produce was progressively shut down, and the goods—for a time—have come in from abroad. Now, we're at the end of the line.

Over a decade later, the financial bubble has burst, and the extreme degree of import-dependence by the United States marks the fact that there is no functioning U.S. economy. The U.S. economy is dead. Look at a snapshot of a few relevant features:

* CONSUMER NECESSITIES—Today, nearly all general household merchandise in use in the U.S. is made in China. Garments have more varied origins, from Bangladesh to Vietnam, as well as China, India and Ibero-America.

Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the U.S. and worldwide, and more than 80 percent of the merchandise it sells in the U.S. is made in China. Target, another big chain, obtains 60 percent of its merchandise in China, for sale in the U.S. Add in the "Dollar Stores" of all kinds, and the near-total extent of imports on this line is clear. In the self-reinforcing process, U.S. manufacturers, facing Wal-Mart as their principal wholesale buyer, went off-shore, for ultra-cheap labor and operations. In Ohio, for example, the process was documented in detail in the 2005 report, AFL-CIO Wal-Mart Campaign, in which brand-name companies quit the U.S.: Sunbeam/Mr. Coffee appliances, Husky bicycles, RCA TV (Thomson Consumer Electronics) and many more.

You can't have the pollution here if you don't make it here.