By Ravi s. Narasimhan (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-12-14 07:51

Newspapers traditionally use a navigational tool called "cross-refer" on the front page to guide readers to a related story on an inside page.

Now, there are so many green stories across the paper that cross-referring them is making the night editor feel blue.

On the nation pages, there are stories of ecological disasters or environmentally-friendly efforts to fight them; or warnings from the central government to local officials that it is the red card if they do not go green.

On the international pages, there are dire warnings of calamities facing us; and inspirational stories that more green jobs are being created than are being lost in "dirty" industries.

On the business pages, there are billions to be made in clean energy and carbon trading.

It is only on the sports pages that the Blues, Le Bleus, the Reds and the Red Devils still hold sway. It is only a matter of time before the Greens take to the field.

On this page, I thought I had a headstart with some environmentally-friendly columns, but I have been out-muscled by among others, fellow-columnist You Nuo who started the Energy and Environment page in China Business Weekly and has gone green since. (See Page 12)

The picture, I gather, is of a similar hue in the Chinese media.

So how did this happen? Two decades of AIDS awareness campaigns do not seem to have had anywhere near the kind of impact environmental issues have had.

Wang Xiaojun, media officer of Greenpeace China, offers an explanation:

"The growth in public and media awareness has a lot to do with the fact that all the environmental problems China has accumulated in the past two decades are finally having a huge impact on everyone's daily life.

"Environmental issues are no longer just the government's concern, or the foreign investors' concern, or, as many people used to think, 'good food, good clothes, good cars, good houses and good education for their kids are top priorities that come way before the environment'.

"The stinky water in Taihu Lake, droughts, floods and typhoons were staring us right in the face ... It has been a two-way interaction between readers' needs and wants and the media's attention that has helped raise public awareness of green issues in China in 2007."

This rising awareness is not restricted to China. A Nielsen global survey in June said consumers in every corner of the world consider it the responsibility of governments to address climate change.

Global warming as a major concern has more than doubled across the world in the short span from October 2006 to April this year, the report says.

The series of inter-governmental panel reports on climate change this year and the Bali conference which ends today have certainly turned up the heat.

But in China, it did not require media attention to realize the scale of the problem; it is a top-down as well as a bottom-up movement. This is just a basic list of what the government has done to go green - while at the same time graciously accepting that it made mistakes in the past:

China is the first country in the world - which, as a developing nation, is not bound by emission-reduction targets - to set voluntary targets for reduction of energy intensity and harmful emissions.

China is the first country in the world to devise the concept of Green GDP, where the quantum of environmental damage is deducted from real GDP to arrive at the green figure.

China is one of the first major countries in the world to accept that global warming is doing great damage to the planet and its people.

China has promised to hold a Green Olympics - and is making every effort to do so, as acknowledged by the International Olympic Committee.

So how green are we? Try measuring the column centimeters in newspapers - and you can have some idea if we are getting there.

As for China Daily, maybe it is time to stop cross-referring green stories. They are everywhere.

E-mail: ravi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 12/14/2007 page10)