Buy local or not?

While the modern environmental movement often portrays capitalist industrial societies as the world’s biggest pollution problem, Forbes notes something interesting about the top-25 cleanest cities in the world: Most of them are in wealthy industrialized democracies. Turns out, all that industrialization created wealth which, in turn, buys the things (mass transit, especially) and pays for the policies that create a cleaner environment. Forbes:

"I can tell you exactly how a pointless blog full of poorly written, incoherent commentary made it to the front page on Digg. I paid people to do it."

Quoted: David Seah on design, development, inspiration, productivity, and empowerment