Let's play the music of save the planet

The 40 leading industrialized countries emitted 2.3 percent more greenhouse gases (GHG) from 2000 to 2006. Massive floods deep below Antarctica's ice cover are accelerating the flow of glaciers into the sea.

These two pieces of news came a couple of weeks before the Dec 1-12 UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland. But unfortunately they went almost unnoticed in the media (both in China and abroad) busy as they were grappling with the global financial crisis.

Call it quirk of the modern world's fate, or our incapability to look beyond the immediate. We are so ensconced in the comforts of our times that nothing beyond the immediate can break our stupor. It's true, global warming made a few headlines before the financial crisis spread its wings from the US and cast a shadow of gloom over the rest of the world. But our response has always been knee-jerk.