They do.
Smog in Mexico is a lot worse than in Los Angeles.
There's forest fires in Australia. So... what?
China is already an environmental disaster--Japan is not. In fact, this comparison here warrants extra attention, because China and Japan, though very close to each other on the map, have completely different environmental difficulties. China's problems center around pollution. Japan's problems center around overpopulation.
Uhm, no. Japan's population is actually falling, it has a well-developed system of natural preserves and parks and its population is concentrated in few coastal regions, while the interior is much less populated. And the air/water pollution from China is a problem.
Japan's main "contribution" to the final collapse is overfishing and the fact that their companies are responsible for an awful lot of damage in poorer countries, so that the Japanese can enjoy their high living standards. Japan has a long tradition of doing just that (which kinda defies the racist notion that colonialism and exploitation is a "white" thing).
Look around the world, you'll find other examples. Environmental disasters are always localized (not completely--there's frequently economic fallout--but the worldwide damage is always minor). Yeah yeah, I'm familiar with the old yarn about how we're all one global village and what hurts one, hurts us all. It's bullcrap.
I take it you never heard about the
trans-Pacific pollution...
What you're saying is bullcrap, to use your dictionary. You totally missed the point:
a major collapse in any of world's regions will spread like an wildfire.
Environmental collapse in Africa, which is inevitable if present-day trends in pop. growth, deforestation, biodiversity loss, desertification, salinisation, etc. continue, will spill over to other regions - especially if their own problems are severe too by the time it happens.
Historically, when the world wasn't so inter-dependent, it was possible for one region to collapse with no-one besides the immediate neighbourhood noticing. Today, it's entirely different. Climate change affects the entire world. Now climate change wouldn't be such a problem if we haven't already strained our environment to breaking point. But since we have done that, every new problem that we encounter has a geometric overall effect which makes it even harder for us to cope.
Example - Africa would be in a mess and on the road to collapse even with no climate change at all. Its population is simply growing too fast and its environment is being destroyed at an incredible rate. What climate change does and will continue to do is to make their problems worse - more severe droughts and floods will make agriculture less productive, desertification coupled with deforestation and soil erosion will turn previously valuable farmland into wasteland, and so on and so forth. As a result you face much greater challenge to make any positive progress at all.
Obviously the developed countries are much better poised to deal with it, but even in Europe and the US, it will costs billions and billions - money that could have been invested elsewhere.
I've already presented a scenario for a collapse in which I demonstrated how interdependent the human civilization is. In that light I simply don't understand why you insist on the notion that the collapse could be neatly contained in the Third World, while we first-worlders continue to live our consumerist wasteful lives surrounded in luxury. That's just ridiculous.
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(I hope the U.N. starts building a spaceship for a trip to Alpha Centauri soon, because the game's plot now looks much more plausible than it did 10 years ago
)
