The real requirement, if we are to avoid runaway global warming, is probably 80% by 2030, and almost no burning whatever of fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) by 2050.

Never did anyone ever stay longer than ten years because the resistance grows fiercer as your presence grows longer [in Afghanistan]. I don't think we are going to be any exception. What made us exempt from history?

Take the year a country first reaches 50% literacy and add one or two generations to allow the idea to sink in and, democracy, more or less automatically, appears.

But we are almost certainly going to miss our [global warming] deadline. We cannot get the 10 lost years back, and by the time a new global agreement to replace the Kyoto accord is negotiated and put into effect, there will probably not be enough time left to stop the warming short of the point where we must not go.

It doesn't matter what we think we are there [in Afghanistan] for; it matters what they think. They think we are invaders.

The real requirement, if we are to avoid runaway global warming, is probably 80% by 2030, and almost no burning whatever of fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) by 2050.

While the high-level climate talks pursue their stately progress towards some ill-defined destination, down in the trenches there is an undercurrent of suppressed panic in the conversations. The tipping points seem to be racing towards us a lot faster than people thought.