I am not an activist by any means, but there are many issues that can be found to be connected if you bothered to look into "globalization". Most people act like you do, Chuck. I do so myself with certain things like cheap vegetables in the supermarket - nobody can produce food that cheap and still sell it for a profit, there have to be some serious problems for the farmers and workers at one point. I once heard a radio feature on migration in west africa. Many people from african nations try to reach europe and take on tremendous risks and dangerous journeys wtih smugglers. Those who make it could end up working as illegals in the southspanish vegetable farms. They call the region "La Ola" because every field is under plastic sheets. The mostly illegal immigrants work under horrible conditions there. It is unbearably hot under the plastic, and they use many toxic pesticides which they breathe in daily. Their health is ruined by the age of 40 - all this so I can buy cheap vegetables all year long. The reason for migration is usually that their domestic market collapsed. The example they brought in the radioshow were fishermen. Along the coastline fish is the main resource, but the huge swimming fishfactories of the industrialized nations (EU, Japan, USA etc) operate just outside the national waters and deplete the fish. The men catch less and less and have to go further out in their little boats which is dangerous and expensive. Sooner or later they make more money chartering their boats out than catching fish. But without the fish the villages along the coastline cant survive - it is the main food source and the people have to migrate, they have no choice. and there are environmental issues with overfishing the oceans, drifting gill nets etc. Everything is connected, and I am not one to buy easily into conspiracy theories. They are fun to cook up and mock though.
I can not afford to constantly buy local products. And you don't see the possible suffering caused by the production of canned tuna or salad or tomatoes from spain or chile or wherever else cheap vegetables come from, so it is easy to overlook it.
There are good projects for fair trade and fair made goods like coffee, cotton, chocolate and alot of others. Of course, I don't know how much of that is a scam to get people to buy it for a higher price with all the rest being the same.
I don't know if it is that easy - me not buying cheap imports being the root cause for backwardness and poverty. I see what you mean with the causality though, but it is awful to just accept it as a fact of life that exploitation has to happen before progress, and that this development hinges on the global market which makes the rest of the world responsible in a way. I like to believe that if I don't buy cheap imports but would be willing (and here's the rub) to pay more for a fairmade product, things could change as well.
I haven't really decided on AGW. For me, it seems logical that all the smoking chimneys since the 18th century might have an impact, but not every environmental issue has to be related to global warming by force. There are enough problems to go around that have nothing to do with global warming at all. There is enough money to go around for the defense budget in china, for an huge government apparatchik and not enough to make sure that the people have access to clean water and nonpolluted food? India could develop a nuclear programm, but it can't stop child slaver labour in stone quarries.. I don't buy that. Their mentality is just different, or so it seems. A single life just doesn't seem to have any value.
