Air pollution is a global issue. China, India and the rest of Asia alone contribute 40% (39.87) to the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. The majority of this comes from burning of coal in the generation of electricity. The USA and the West allow these sources to pollute without any environmental controls and offer ‘preferred nation status’ on trade. We are spending billions of dollars per year on controls and yet are only 12.60% of the problem.
Current control technology has proven to be reliable and cost-effective and could be easily tied to these polluters as a metric used in trade policies. This would cause a positive impact to reducing global pollution and provide economic incentive for these countries to install some controls without trying to pass along costs to consumers. The most significant benefit would be for American technology suppliers, many of whom are small and medium sized businesses
