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on China's soil, that carbon will be counted towards China's total, not towards your country's. When you allocate consumer-crap-carbon to the consumer, you see Europeans emitting far more carbon than Chinese people.

So we definitely still have some pretty massive changes to make in the developed world in combatting climate change. Then again, assuming nothing is done then most of the increases in greenhouse emissions will come from the developing world, so isn't it still mostly up to China and that? Not really, if you think about the graphs for a moment, but that's entirely beside the point.

Squabbling over which countries should sort out what's by it's very nature a global problem is a great way of seeing that it never gets sorted. Everytime someone in Europe says "I don't have to do anything until those Chinese get their act together", it provides the perfect excuse for someone in China to say "I don't have to do anything until those Europeans get their act together". Global warming is global. It affects us all, and we all have to work to prevent it. United we stand up to climate change, divided we fall.

If it's not enough that this kind of squabbling could doom us all, just think about how unfair it is. No matter how much pollution the poorer half of the world manages to emit now, it's us in the rich world who've brought this catastrophe on us all and it's them that suffer from it. Droughts in Africa, fires in Amazonia, floods in Bangladesh - global warming is already killing, displacing and dispossessing the innocents of the Third World by their millions, while the polluters in the First World are still debting whether they're even doing anything wrong.

This sixth position, this terror of the Yellow Peril, this dirtiest of dirty rotten tricks, this is where the current battle must be fought. We must fight for global cooperation, way above and beyond the petty rivalries of nation-states. Position six is out there, getting into our heads. It's on the tip of some people's tongues and in the back of others' minds, but it's there. When we start to worry that we might have to face up to the scary reality and change the way we live, it's often easier just to blame China.

It's a divisive, destructive and defeatist falsehood, and it must be brought down. We can't let up yet. Because the battle for the sixth position may well decide the timing and the outcome of the final showdown, the final dirty lie.

Position 7 OK, OK, OK!

> climate change is happening,
> it's happening as a direct result of human activity,
> it's a bad thing,
> the markets won't be able to sort it out on their own,
> it will cost more to live with it than it would to stop it,
> it's our responsibility as much as anyone else's
> but we won't lift a finger to stop it because
> it's already too late.

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