You have good reason to be suspicious.
It has been shown that free market, capitalist, democratic societies are far more beneficial to the environment than backwards tyrannical ones.
When the Iron Curtain came down, the environmental disaster was clearly visible to the West.
And so we see it with the flight of people from Africa, the Middle East, and South/Central America. Just look at the giant swaths of filth in the routes that illegals into the USA used for years, covered with everything from used toilet paper and needles to women’s underclothing torn from their bodies...and everything in between.
“When the Iron Curtain came down, the environmental disaster was clearly visible to the West.”
Quite true. However, Eastern Europe largely missed out on the Third World invasion that is destroying Western Europe.