From The Observer:
In Beijing, you are not allowed to set the air conditioning below 28C, the street lighting in the suburbs around the city has solar panels attached and the athletes in the Olympic village being built for the 2008 Games will all power-shower using renewable energy. Laudable though that may sound, Beijing’s environmental action plan is often literally overshadowed by the cloud of pollution which usually hangs over the city, causing coughs and allergies among its citizens.
Beijing’s pollution problems are only a small part of the larger environmental headache facing the Chinese government, a headache which meant that the most common response to last week’s Stern report on climate change was: ‘What about the Chinese?’
It is a crucial question. While China’s greenhouse-gas emissions may currently be eclipsed by arch-polluter America, unless some drastic measures are taken soon, it will be by far the biggest culprit within the next decade. [Full text]
