Sustainable mindset needed

That Beijing presented its rules on air pollution control to its legislative body for approval on Saturday is a sign that the capital is throwing down the gauntlet to smog, the biggest blight and shame on this ancient and modern metropolis.

What has added to the significance of the event was the fact that participants in the sessions of Shanghai's legislative body and political advisory committee also focused their discussions on smog on the same day. And two days before, Beijing's neighboring Hebei province, which has seven of the 10 cities with most serious air pollution in the country, convened a press conference on its plans for air pollution control.

The increasingly in-your-face problem of air pollution across the country points to the heavy debt the nation's development has accumulated to the environment over the past more than three decades.