Of course this means more downside when they finally decide to clean up the mess, as inevitably they will.

We can also blame the World trade Organisation and free traders generally for paying insufficient attention to labour practices and environmental outcomes.

I think I forgot to mention that 80% of the rivers by length now are too polluted to contain fish, thus destroying a food source and a cultural practice as well as the welfare of the fish.

The toxicity of the environment is causing direct harm to the people. The State has to take responsibility for preventing this.

More generally Virginia Trioli had an interesting chat with John Pomfret on Lateline the other night. Pomfret thinks that in the long run having the Olympics will be good for the Chinese and that pressure for political change will coalesce around environmental issues.

No comment needed on King Canute.

I think the problem is that in many instances now we buy Chinese goods or nothing. And I wouldn’t be totally confident in any assurances given me by The Forest Stewardship Council about my guitar if I was Paul N (see comment 6). According to the article there is a racket going on through Malaysia whereby illegal logs are given false certificates.

A few years ago we added a deck to the house, as you do in Brisvegas, and arranged for French doors to be installed from our dining room to match the silky oak paneling which was cut from Queensland timbers in the 1930s. We found after installation that the timber came from Borneo and was probably home to some orangutan before it was cut. I wonder whether there was any other option. It’s almost impossible for private consumers to research these things.

So, China could cut 30% of it’s emissions by NOT exporting stuff to the west, and most western countries no longer have the means to manufacture replacement items.

So, those complaining about pollution in China can do something merely by curing themselves of affluenza and the “need” for the latest gizmo.

Global warming and capitalism solved with the same (in)action?

(2) On your point about the (short term) weather being subject to government will, it’s worth remembering that King Canute/Knut ordered back the tide to prove to his panderers that there are some things even divinely-ordained kings can’t do

(3) Recent studies have shown that sea-level rises take some time to flow around. Apparently, even if the Greenland glaciers all melted tomorrow, it’d take a few decades for this to contribute to any significant change in the Indian or Pacific oceans because it would be trapped in the Atlantics by the way surface currents work around tips of South Am and Africa. Trapping the rises to the North Atlantic would be poetic justice.

Terrible, terrible post. What a litany of disaster. I wonder how many Chinese lives have been lost to stage the ‘games’ and for the benefit of China ‘looking’ good. (Which it clearly doesn’t, indeed nothing’s clear at all). Just another woeful case of . . . Vanity, vanity all is but . . .etc

The temporary diversion of water is enough to make life difficult, if not seriously so–for how many millions?

Who’s to say what to do? But the greatest communist country in the world is surely having the last laugh as the rest of us buy its crappy goods en masse. There’d hardly be a household on the planet that can claim to be completely devoid of goods ‘Made in China’. (Unless of course you’re obsessed about avoiding them, but to do so must mean you’re either rich or very spartan.)

The only upside to this dire situation is that should the Chinese regime ever decide to seriously address the shit in their own nest, we can rest assured that it will happen–for the good of Chinah. At the moment however, they seem like the rest of us gripped by fear and greed. No doubt some of us will be telling them what is the good of China. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone (and kill the capitalist monster?) Not holding my breath and gladly not in Beijing and having to.

“The little children chant, in the hope that the land will turn green again…. Chinese children have the same hopes and dreams that we do…. the sparrows are falling from the sky, they sing…. the ice caps are melting…. a message of global warming.”

Oh, dear.