Global warming and greenhouse gases have now risen to prominence in the political spectrum. It seems that all politicians, either willingly or unwillingly, have to address these issues in a positive way.

It fascinates me that even in this highly important matter, we have the infantile approach of trying to blame someone else as being worse than we are, and so lessening our own responsibility. It is the same trick that squabbling schoolboys use: “He started it, and is worse than I am!”

Already, the leaders of the Western world are pointing the finger at China and India as being major contributors to industrial pollution, trying to shift the focus somewhere else and so absolve them from taking action.

There is no question that these countries are sources of major global pollution. The question is, why is this so?

It seems to me that these emerging nations in the industrial scene are very keen to buy our coal at the best price possible for us, so they can have the cheapest possible energy for their factories.

The factories may well be reasonably primitive, relatively cheap to build and operate. More than likely they are employing labour at a much cheaper price than we would deem acceptable in our society.

Because of this they are in a position to manufacture goods much cheaper than we can do in our more sophisticated and somewhat more costly manufacturing systems. How many industries have we lost in Australia to cheaper manufacturing countries?

When this is mixed with our appetite to buy goods at the cheapest possible price, not only have we developed a global market, we have also developed a global problem built on inequality. Global trade rarely operates on a level playing field.

It seems to me that the vast majority of goods and products we buy in our Australian stores are, in fact, manufactured in China and other such countries. We do this to make use of the cheapest possible means of production. China is simply meeting our needs in the cheapest possible way. But is it cheap in the long run?

While our political leaders are finger-pointing at these emerging manufacturing countries with their cheaper means of production, the real question is, are we a part of this problem, or is it all the fault and responsibility of the Chinese and other such nations?

Do they alone have to contain their greenhouse emissions and “fix the problem” or do we, the Western world, have some responsibility here because we are the consumers who make it happen?

As in most areas of life, it is possibly a time for joint responsibility and not just divisive finger-pointing.