In today's China Business Weekly, published in the China Daily every Monday, readers can find something new. It is the "Energy and Environment" supplement (Page 3) that will be appearing regularly.

As a consultant to the China Daily, I was extremely happy with the ready acceptance of my suggestion three weeks ago that we need to focus on the environmental crisis accompanying China's rapid development.

What should make the new publication a voice worth listening to is the involvement of two of China Daily's strongest operations - the energy business and environmental protection reporting teams.

The managers of the newspaper's two major news departments, national news and business news, got enthusiastically involved in the change.

From now on, in every Monday's China Business Weekly as well as China Daily's regular business coverage, readers can follow energy industry developments - new pipelines, new power stations, new imports and new discoveries of reserves - alongside the ideas and solutions to curb pollution and save resources.

This is the first time, so far as I know, that a national Chinese news operation is bringing together energy and environment in its daily reporting, and bringing environmental issues into what is traditionally understood as industry - especially what is commonly seen as a hopeless polluter.

Right now, China Daily only has a small energy-and-environment team. But it can be seen as a sign of important change. Business reporting will no longer be separate from environmental concerns.

It is about time to remove the separation in a country that has been leading the world's economic growth and, in the process, also been generating astonishing records in pollution and waste. As major trends begin with small signs, I hope the practice started here will be followed by more news organizations in China, with environment no less emphasized than development.

What is worrisome, however, is an unhealthy tendency - in journalism as well as politics, and sometimes even more so in politics. Environmental concerns and business interests are often championed by different movements as if the values they represent are ultimately conflicting in nature.

At one extreme are people suggesting that the only possible consequence of the developing world's continuous development is more waste and more pollution, if not total global catastrophe. At the other extreme are people insisting that since development is a human right, people in non-Western societies deserve to spend and waste as much as their Western counterparts do or once did.

To balance the extremes, some are calling for developing countries to refrain from Western middle-class luxury. Luxury aside, it's obvious that if all people in the developing world are to enjoy even the minimal requirements of clean drinking water, decently cooked food and heating in cold weather, greatly increased energy consumption and emissions are likely.

The world needs both development and environmental concern. Of course people will have to change their lifestyles - just as business reporters will have to learn to look at business issues from an environmental perspective. But the solution is not to just learn the virtue of refraining from development but to use effective emission control technologies.

One long-term reason to merge energy and environmental reporting in China Daily is precisely this - to check on the policies, laws, and market forces to make emission control a business, not just a slogan.

E-mail: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 06/04/2007 page4)