As most of you know, China has a little problem with pollution. Well, actually let's rephrase that, they have a really big pollution problem from countless coal plants, a smog cloud that stretches over the Pacific Ocean and a dead zone building at the deltas of many of their rivers that continue to grow and spread.

However, while the federal governments in Canada and the United States drag their feet, China is taking some measures on dealing with global warming and they are doing so by targeting one of the biggest causes of global warming; the automobile.

On the heels of the start of the Olympics where the environmental record of China is being looked at and scrutinized, China has decided to deal with the smog and the cars and is moving away from the big cars that seemed to have been so popular in China just a few months ago. First of all, they are reducing the taxes on small cars to as little as one percent, while they are increasing the taxes on large vehicles to as much as 40 percent. All of this is being done to encourage people to buy smaller cars that pollute less, use less gas and get better mileage.

The tax scale will be based on the size of the engine in the car, with gas tanks measuring over four liters seeing their taxes go from 20 to 40 percent, while engines with two to four liters will be taxed 25 percent, up from 15 percent. Any cars that are smaller than one liter will have their taxes drop from three to one percent.

Sure it is a drop in the bucket to the pollution problem, but it is a step in the right direction, and it is a step North America really needs to look at if they want to seriously deal with the greenhouse gas problem. Now if only China would start heavily taxing the coal plants, then we might be taking a really big step in the right direction and people in Oregon wouldn't be breathing in coal powder from Chinese power plants across the Pacific Ocean.