Future hazy as we count the cost of warp-speed growth

If the Four Horsemen had ridden out of the gloom that surrounded Beijing recently, few people would have been surprised. It did seem the End of Days for many, as the PM2.5 index broke past the 500 mark and the capital city was shrouded in the worst smog it had experienced in so many years.

Amidst the cacophony of calls for control and legislation, some of which came out muffled by industrial-strength face masks, it is time to examine how we arrived at such a sorry state.

Not so long ago, at the last US-China Forum, American food activist and author Michael Pollan made this remark: The US has much to learn from China, which has been coaxing food out of the same piece of land for thousands of years.