The Los Angeles Times had an interesting front page graphic on Wednesday, showing that Beijing’s air pollution is many times that of the famously smoggy City of the Angels.

The chart goes with a news article the struggle of Chinese people to convince their government to tackle cleaning up their nation’s air, a hugely expensive project, as we know from our own environmental regulations. We shall see whether reform happens, given the stubbornness of the ChiCom leadership and the dependence of industry on old-fashioned coal-fueled energy.

The smog in big cities is unimaginable, and is obviously a hazard to human health. One report warned that in some areas, air pollution is now impeding photosynthesis and creating possible damage to country’s food supply. Water and farmland are polluted also, but the thick grey air is unavoidable.

A potential clean-up of Chinese air filth should be welcomed by environmentalists, if the greenies could unhinge briefly from their globalist perspective and celebrate an instance of national responsibility.

Unfortunately, what happens in China doesn’t stay in China. Airborne crud floats across the jet stream directly to the west coast of the United States.

Pollution From China Is Hitting America’s West Coast, Reuters, January 21, 2014 BEIJING (Reuters) – Pollution from China travels in large quantities across the Pacific Ocean to the United States, a new study has found, making environmental and health problems unexpected side effects of U.S. demand for cheap China-manufactured goods. On some days, acid rain-inducing sulfate from burning of fossil fuels in China can account for as much as a quarter of sulfate pollution in the western United States, a team of Chinese and American researchers said in the report published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a non-profit society of scholars.

So the “cheap” manufactured products from Red China come with a hidden cost to Amerians’ health and environmental safety.

China’s prolific pollution production makes another argument for returning outsourced industry to the United States, where manufacturing will be kinder to the planet.

And why is planet-fouling Red China a member of the World Trade Association where it is given a level playing field with environmentally responsible nations? China deserves a big pollution tariff, which would be good for all concerned, particularly the ChiCom leaders who need a strong reality check to get their act together.

Here’s the LA Times article, which doesn’t mention the effects of Chinese pollution on others, but focuses on the efforts of Chinese citizens to knock some sense into politicians, which is very laudable in an authoritarian state.