A lot of GDP growth is in box-moving, paper shuffling, services, sales and so on, which can be made with "less stuff" (e.g some even completely online).
OTOH, tons of industrial production for US companies, the dirty kind, has been moved to China and co.
Even if the US "manufacture's more units than ever" (and what those units are? If it manufactures more e.g. packaged food than ever, it wouldn't really be as polluting as manufacturing more cars or computers/mobiles, or several other kinds of products, than ever). I'd wager that the more pollutant and messy production has been moved to China / the developing world / etc.
The same way as most of the western "recycled" stuff just goes to the developing world to be pillages for parts and then dumped into landfills and rivers...
A lot of GDP growth is in box-moving, paper shuffling, services, sales and so on, which can be made with "less stuff" (e.g some even completely online).
OTOH, tons of industrial production for US companies, the dirty kind, has been moved to China and co.
Even if the US "manufacture's more units than ever" (and what those units are? If it manufactures more e.g. packaged food than ever, it wouldn't really be as polluting as manufacturing more cars or computers/mobiles, or several other kinds of products, than ever). I'd wager that the more pollutant and messy production has been moved to China / the developing world / etc.
The same way as most of the western "recycled" stuff just goes to the developing world to be pillages for parts and then dumped into landfills and rivers...