George Marshall wrote the following on Thursday about the Live Earth concerts:

Live Earth will undoubtedly create a buzz and interest around climate change. But I do not believe it will produce significant change because it fundamentally misunderstands the challenge. The reason we are not doing enough about climate change is not because we don't know about it, or that it is not hip, or that we don't care. The problem is that we are locked into patterns of collective denial and have adopted a wide range of strategies to avoid accepting personal responsibility. 

While China agreed to broadcast the concerts, check out this disquieting story:

China rejects binding target to cut greenhouse gas emissions

David Adam, environment correspondent
Friday July 6, 2007
The Guardian
China will not agree any form of binding target to reduce its soaring greenhouse gas emissions as part of a new international deal on climate change, a senior official confirmed yesterday.

Lu Xuedu, deputy director of the Chinese government's office of global environmental affairs, said it "was not the time" for China to consider binding commitments, and he criticised developed countries for playing what he called the "games of children" over global warming.But Mr Xuedu said China had not ruled out binding targets in future. "For the time being we don't have that capability to make those commitments. We hope we will have that capability very soon but it depends on the development process," he said in evidence to the UK joint committee on climate change. "When we can take such binding commitments will depend on our capability, our economical development level."

China does have about 700 million of its citizens living in poverty, but it is considered to have passed the United States as the world's biggest total emitter of GHGs (the U.S. still leads China and virtually all other nations on a per-capita basis). Writing earlier this year in the Guardian, columnist and author George Monbiot said the developed world must help China decarbonize its economy and persuade the U.S. to "do what it did in 1941, and turn the economy around on a dime.

"But above all we need to show that we remain serious about fighting climate change, by setting the targets the science demands."

If China and the U.S. don't take the problem seriously, then this planet -- and everyone on it -- faces a major problem, if not a catastrophe.

If so, big irony on your part.

From the July 4 Guardian story:

Consumers' love of hi-tech gadgets is set to undermine attempts to curb the UK's carbon emissions, the Energy Saving Trust (EST) claimed today.

The proliferation of home entertainment equipment such as flatscreen TVs, digital radios and laptops in homes means that by 2020 this type of technology will account for 45% of domestic electricity use.

This means 14 power stations will be required just to power equipment used for communication and entertainment, the EST said in its report the Ampere Strikes Back.

From the New Yorker article:

The Taliban have made a concerted comeback in the past two years; they are the de-facto authority in much of the Pashtun south and east, and have recently spread their violence to parts of the north as well. The debilitating and corrupting effects of the opium trade on the government of President Hamid Karzai is a significant factor in the Taliban’s revival.

The Taliban instituted a strict Islamist policy against the opium trade during the final years of their regime, and by the time of their overthrow they had virtually eliminated it. But now, Lieutenant General Mohammad Daud-Daud, Afghanistan’s deputy minister of the interior for counter-narcotics, told me, “there has been a coalition between the Taliban and the opium smugglers. This year, they have set up a commission to tax the harvest.” In return, he said, the Taliban had offered opium farmers protection from the government’s eradication efforts. The switch in strategy has an obvious logic: it provides opium money for the Taliban to sustain itself and helps it to win over the farming communities.

The impression I've gotten from journalists who have travelled with the Taliban is the insurgents aren't hurting for money. It also costs far, far less to keep a Taliban foot soldier in the field for a year than his Canadian or other NATO counterpart.

If the Taliban aren't hurting for money as a result of drug revenues, have a safe haven in Pakistan and NATO troops keep killing civilians in the battle against the Taliban, then it would seem this conflict has the potential to go on for a long, long time. :(

China is a key player in an illegal trade that could push some tropical hardwood species to extinction, say activists. However, the West deserves a black eye for providing a market for the finished product.

From the BBC:

I have spent some time resting in the two days since I was freed, and I have only just switched on my computer.

These are the first words that I have written since I was captured four months ago, and I wanted to dedicate them to all those many tens-of-thousands of people who signed the online petition in support of my release.

To each and every one of you, I want to say that I am so grateful.