On own road to green revolution

By Li Xing

Smog blurred the skyline on Oct 6 morning as I opened the curtain of my hotel room in Tianjin. The day was hot and stifling; the heat and CO2 seemed to be trapped beneath a blanket of smog.

"We have quite a few days like this," my taxi driver told me as she took me to the Tianjin railway station.

"There are so many cars are on the road these days; still, I feel the authorities should put a stricter cap on car emissions," she said.

I couldn't agree more, especially after three days of covering the on-going United Nations climate change negotiations.

The atmosphere inside the Tianjin Meijiang Convention and Exhibition Center was relaxed, with little of the political intensity I felt while covering the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen last December.

One reason, I believe, was that the participants - from government negotiators to representatives of international and non-government organizations - had already downgraded their expectations.

Christiana Figueres, the new executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, conceded that even with additional preparation in Tianjin, the agreements to be reached in Cancun, Mexico, in early December will not be "exhaustive in their details".

Perhaps that is why many participants could not hide their disappointment over the slow progress of the negotiations. As Martin Khor, executive director of South Center, a Geneva-based non-government international organization of 51 developing countries, pointed out, millions of people have suffered from devastating floods in Pakistan, China and elsewhere, as well as from the severe heat that caused great forest fires in Russia.

The deaths and devastation should accelerate these climate talks, which aim to commit all countries to slow down global warming and prevent a dangerous level of human interference in the climate cycle.

Inevitably, some have resorted to finger-pointing. Western media say China is "in the hot seat"; some delegates accuse China of playing "arithmetic" or setting easily attainable targets for CO2 emissions. Speakers at the conference were frequently asked to evaluate China's actions in mitigating climate change and China's role in the negotiations.