The world at our feet | The Daily Telegraph

Well, we Australians are the rulers of the Warm War. According to Professor James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, "Australia exports coal and sets atmospheric carbon dioxide goals so large as to guarantee destruction of much of the life on the planet".

Read that last line again.

So far as Hansen can tell, Australia guarantees destruction of much of the life on the planet. We don't have to build missile silos, launch moon rockets, establish atomic weapons bases on Cuba or send dissidents to remote gulags.

All we need do is simply continue digging up combustible dirt and otherwise carry on as usual and we hold a knife to the world's throat.

We can barely defeat a South African cricket team led by someone with only one functioning arm, but destruction of the planet is something we can achieve even despite an under-performing opening batsman and an off-spinner who off-straights. We. Totally. Rock.

Bear in mind that Hansen isn't one of your fringe-dwelling, apocalyptic, carbon-pollution maniacs, the type who only risk reproduction during the excitement of Earth Hour and don't own shoes. He's one of your mainstream, apocalyptic, carbon-pollution maniacs, who is a pal of Al Gore and testifies before US congressional committees.

Can U.S., China Team Up on Climate, Energy? - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

Now President-elect Barack Obama has a ripe chance to work with Chinese leaders and take the climate lead, according to a variety of people trying to forge new efforts to cut long-term climate risks by curbing emissions.

China announces plan to single-handedly destroy the climate; guess whose "fault" this allegedly is

In short, from 2007 to 2015, China will increase its coal production by an amount equal to two-thirds of the entire coal consumption of the United States — an amount that surpasses all of the coal consumed today in Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South America.

Such is the legacy of 8 years of the Bush administration blocking all national and international action on climate change, and indeed actively working to undermine international negotiations by creating a parallel do-nothing track for countries like China. As Chinese officials have told me, we gave them the cover to accelerate emissions growth.