Controlling pollution is ... a game of whack-a-mole?

Remember Larry Summers, back when he was the World Bank's chief economist, writing in 1991 that controversial memo, from which he later back-pedaled saying it was a thought experiment and was sarcastic.  That memo joked about the low earnings in emerging economies leading to the "cost" of pollution being lower there and, therefore, polluting industries should migrate to those poorer countries.

Remember that?

The reality is that it was no joke.  Polluting industries found China and India and others to be "better" locations compared to the US and the UK and others that were tightening up the environmental regulations and targeting polluters.

Now, people in the advanced countries, who claim that they have done a lot to clean up their air and water and soil, conveniently forget that they have in reality outsourced pollution.

Many wealthy countries have effectively “outsourced” a big chunk of their carbon pollution overseas, by importing more steel, cement and other goods from factories in China and other places, rather than producing it domestically.

Like I said, the Summers memo from almost 30 years ago was no joke.

From 1990, about the time that Summers authored that memo, to 2015:

If you included all the global emissions produced in the course of making things like the imported steel used in London’s skyscrapers and cars, then Britain’s total carbon footprint has actually increased slightly over that time.

A cleaner Britain, indeed! “If a country is meeting its climate goals by outsourcing emissions elsewhere, then we’re not making as much progress as we thought.”

Because the problem is global, and not localized, the solution is simple, right? "One possible solution to all this emissions shifting would be for all countries to work together to enact a global carbon tax that applied equally everywhere."

tRump can't even sign on to a global climate agreement.  A global carbon tax will never happen.  So ... then what?

Environmentalists and state governments can target the supply chains for their environmental impacts through "buy clean" laws.  This will put pressure on suppliers "to lower their emissions. “Even for companies who don’t want to admit it,” Mr. Erickson said, “they know a change is coming.”

Yes, it is coming.  Despite the people that 63 million voted to power.