An ambitious deal in Paris is needed to boost green growth

Global leaders should not allow their countries' current economic woes to dent their ambition to reach an agreement on transforming the world economy towards a low-carbon future.

Instead, they should do their best to achieve a climate deal that will not only reduce mankind's exposure to increasingly severe weather-related disasters but, more importantly, help create green economic growth and jobs.

Just before the representatives from nearly 200 nations are to meet in Paris on Nov 30 for talks aimed at striking a landmark deal on climate change, the UN issued a new report on Monday highlighting the necessity for immediate action.

The report found that over the past 20 years, 90 percent of major disasters have been caused by nearly 6,500 recorded floods, storms, heatwaves, droughts and other weather-related events and more than 600,000 people have died as a result of these weather-related disasters, with an additional 4.1 billion people injured, left homeless or in need of emergency assistance.

While such evidence of the human cost of climate change makes it more urgent than ever to cut climate-warming greenhouse gases, encouraging progress by the world's largest emitters to clarify their very specific commitments will also help increase the chance for a new global deal to emerge from the upcoming climate conference.

For instance, in November last year, the United States and China agreed that the United States will cut its 2005 level of carbon emissions by 26 to 28 percent before 2025 and China will peak its carbon emissions by 2030, while aiming to get 20 percent of its energy from zero-emission sources by the same year.

Equally important is global businesses' support for an ambitious deal in Paris that could give a huge boost to their confidence to invest heavily in long-term green growth.

Also on Monday, the chief executives of 78 major companies, with combined annual turnover of $2.1 trillion, issued an open letter urging world leaders to seize the chance to strive for an ambitious deal featuring effective climate policies that would trigger low-carbon investment and transform current emission patterns at a significant scale to help create both economic growth and jobs.

Though business leaders' call for including the pricing of carbon emissions as part of policies to curb global warming smacks of self-interest, the recent Volkswagen emissions scandal has laid bare the very high stakes for enterprises. And if such a leading global automaker such as Volkswagen could keep cheating on emission for profits, in retrospect, the failure of the highly anticipated climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009 is not really surprising.

But the growing number of consumers for green technology and products has injected extra impetus into global efforts to build a low-carbon future by reversing the world's centuries-old reliance on fossil fuels.

In this sense, Chinese consumers have already shown remarkable potential in taking the lead to speed up the transformation of the world economy to a greener future.

When I went to Copenhagen in 2009 to cover the climate talks, electric cars were shown to the media as a kind of fancy high-tech luxury.

Now, as I pass the public charging poles near my home in Beijing, surrounded by more and more electric cars I have become quite confident in telling my 8-year-old son that our next car will definitely be an electric one.

Sales of new energy cars almost tripled in China in the first ten months of this year. And the huge potential of the Chinese market ought to be a good reason not only for automakers at home and abroad to go green as fast as possible but also for world leaders to try and reach a deal in Paris.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily.

zhuqiwen@chinadaily.com.cn