Green price tag for China's boom

The market mechanism does not reflect the full price of what we are buying. The prices of the resources used do not necessarily reflect that they are running out. The pollution generated in the manufacture is typically not priced at all. And when the product eventually goes into landfill, that cost is typically heavily subsidised by government.

The second issue is global. China's rapid growth is likely to continue long into the future. Most economists agree China's GDP will surpass America's sometime in the 2020s. Yet global resources are finite; and the capacity of our ecosystems to absorb pollution and landfill are also finite.

A world in which each Chinese person has the environmental impact that each Australian and American has today is utterly unsustainable. Yet this is precisely where we are heading: and it is no answer to ask the Chinese to remain poor and undeveloped to lessen the impact on the environment. That is unfair and impossible.

Research is needed into the environmental impact of China's manufacturing revolution and into creative policy responses to the environmental challenges posed by our over-consumption.

In the meantime, my choice to buy a new drill instead of a replacement battery was the wrong one, certainly for my grandchildren, if not for me. Perhaps it is time, for each of us, to think about what we buy, and why, and about what the full price of each purchase really is.