€2! Pushing the boat out, there! My fly swats cost me nothing. I was sent them free by the Calvados tourist office because La Manche tourist office sent me one of theirs, free.
They also double as maps ! 
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Thanks for that. I will investigate.
Me too, but it is unavoidable, as others have said. We have exported our consciences, the only excuse is that it began before we knew fully the consequences.
A few days ago I bought a 30 metre dog training line from Amazon France. It was from their warehouse but the sellers name could not have been other than Chinese. Nothing to do with price, it was the only one, the longest of the opposition (which might have been Chinese too for all I know) was 15 metres.
An interesting footnote (advance warning; that is a pun)… My wife & I had cause to exchange a pair of Chinese made wellie boots (Blackfox brand) that had only stayed leak free for 3 months since purchase.
Jardi Leclerc didn’t question the need to do so (hoorah!) & armed with our avoir we went to get a new pair off of the shelves. She was going to go for a straight swap when I happened to look at a slightly different (better) design by the same manufacturer & found that they were made in the EU. They might still not last the course but at least we made an effort & made a very small difference.
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Wouldn’t fancy trying to train that dog!
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If ‘we’ is the UK or France or Europe that’s a lot of people power. We can act directly and indirectly to reduce CO2. By indirectly I refer to choosing the greenest suppliers.
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Took me a minute to decipher that comment Michaell, perhaps I should re jig it as:
A few days ago I bought a 30 metre long line for dog training, from Amazon France.
However, I pride myself for being capable of training any dog of any size. 
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You any good with mother in laws ?
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I think this is oversimplistic, cities like Beijing have had serious air pollution for maybe half a century (brown coal used for domestic heating) consequently China’s rulers, who obviously live and work in these cities have been very aware of the problem for a long time, but it’s one of those turning round an oil tanker situations. However, I think by the end of this decade those of us still here to drive around, won’t unfortunately be driving Tesla’s, but will be driving electric cars made in China.
See:-
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/business/china-electric-cars.html
The rich western companies do exactly what the consumer requires. Why would they not ? It’s the consumer that buys the goods.
No. No. No. The UK exports a large amount of it’s emmisions to other countries (think China and Africa). If you count the products that come from outside of the UK, and the cr** that the UK exports to other (mainly third world) countries, it’s way more than 2%. This is the argument that many climate deniers use to try to abrogate any responsibility for the current situation. Don’t please buy into that fallacy.
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What’s the true figure
Not sure about the exact figure, but for imported goods alone, I think it’s at least another 1.2%. considering that the UK population is less than 1% of global population, that’s a lot. And that doesn’t take into account the emissions that we export.
Although the smoke & mirrors used to underplay the emissions of any one country are annoying we must not get distracted by that anger. Greenhouse gas emissions, habitat destruction, & over exploitation of all kinds are a global danger & need to be tackled by everyone. There’s no point in the “I’ll do it if you do it” approach; leading by example is far better.
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South Korea can supply anything that China can, albeit that China might have a stranglehold on the supply of some raw materials such as tantalum.
It’s just going to cost more.
Of course, the U.K. is in the even more strategically ruinous position of having her key industries owned and operated by foreign companies.
One relevant calculation is Oxfam’s: the richest 1% of the Earth’s population is responsible for twice as much CO2 as the poorest half of the Earth’s population.
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I don’t think I would believe too much about stats when it comes from Oxfam.
True. But if ‘the consumer’ really gave more than a token stuff about the issue, things would have changed a long time ago because the problem has existed for a long time.
An old g/f was ‘front of house’ manager of Friends of the Earth UK HQ. The result of this was I did a lot of the photography of their ‘live/street’ demos.
For example, they dumped several tonnes of bones from an abbatoire on the front steps of the ministry responsible for the trade in endagered species. They presented a ream of A4 paper, made of recycled paper, to the then Sec of State for The Environment, one M. Heseltine.
This was 40 years ago.
Things have improved but not so much that you would say that multinational corporations have made a priority to ‘be green’. The recent scandal of the VW emissions cheat was based on the knowledge that to be seen to be ‘green’ goes down well with the consumer but let’s not do it to the detriment of the balance sheet and share price.
Very true, but sadly there are a lot of people who can’t afford to buy anything other than the cheap or cheapest goods. Corporations are only too glad to service that market regardless of the added costs to society as a whole. Trying to fix that will be very complicated, but must involve less consumption, which will be a hard sell to lots of people. There are also lots who just don’t care, like some of my family members.
The same applies to food. The bottom end of the economic scale buys poor quality mass produced stuff. A Burger King ‘Bacon Double Cheeseburger’ costs US$2.29/€1.95 [€1=US$1.1745]
Deforestation in Brazil to run cattle on poor, temporary grassland is an issue with the likes of Burger King and MacDonald’s.
A marvellous exchange took place on the R4 BBC’s ‘The Food Programme’. The chairman of the UK S/mkt Consortium [or somesuch] talked up the ‘very extensive choice’ offered to UK customers. Sotto voce, from the other guest, the late, great Clarissa Dickson-Wright, came the comment, “Cheap shit”.
The Chairman expostulated “I beg your pardon!” C D-W replied in firm and clear tones "Cheap Shit!"
A person with a clip-board doing some sort of survey in my then local Tesco was interested to hear my theory of a demographic indicator for any of s/mkt store - the length of the aisle with crisps and the like.
Huge at the Tesco at Eastville, Bristol, on the site of the old dog racing track [along with that other lover of rock-bottom real estate, IKEA] , minimal in the Waitrose in Bath city centre.
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