Sending your dirty laundry abroad doesn't make the world a cleaner place

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2116131,00.html

The U.S. sends its coal to China while closing down their own coal energy plants because it is dirty energy. Surely this is false economy if you offset the global impact of such coal trade. There should be a ban for such activities considering environmental and economic costs of exporting coals from one country to the other. The exported coal will be burned for energy anyway, only thousands of miles away from where it was mined.  The world will still endure the CO2 emitted from plants in China.

What is ironic is the U.S. then imports solar panels from China because the Chinese produces them for cheaper with the help of their government in subsidies.