It is ALWAYS our fault!

I was reading Scientific American online (a magasine that I rather like) and
I found this interesting article:

"Fouled Up: An Eyewitness Look at China's Environment. Part 1: Dirty Air"
(http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=fouled_up_an_eyewitness_look_at_china_s&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1)

which is about the pollution in China.
And here is the first paragraph:

"China's environmental headaches are well known, but words and pictures do not do it justice. This past May I spent a couple of weeks traveling around the Pearl River delta, in an area triangulated by Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou (Canton) in the province of Guangdong. The region has shifted from centuries-old farming to widespread power plants and factories creating cheap, plentiful goods for Wal-Mart and other stores. The goods, though, would not be such a bargain if you factor in the environmental costs."

(where the bold is mine.)

So I found myself wandering:
1- in China people do not vote, so I cannot imagine how much they can feed-back or discuss about environmental problems
2- they come from 2 generations under a communistic regime that could do anything it wanted about the environment (and they surely did[*] )
3- and still, the fault is ours!? (of the "west")

When will we (in the west) stop felling guilty for all the other parts of the planet does?

How is it possible that an article that is supposed to state the problems of China, ends up blaming our supermarkets, companies (and possibly our way of life)?

Let's not forget that ecology is an invention of our society, after all.

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[*] From http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/threats.htm:

"The environmental desolation created by the Communist regimes is a warning for the whole of civilsation" (Vaclav Havel, president of the Czech Republic). In communist countries, bad news about the environment has been censored. Production quotas overrode all other considerations.