The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting piece on China's efforts to rein in its greenhouse gases. If the country gets even halfway to meeting its latest energy efficiency goals by 2010, it will cut emissions growth by more than the EU plans to do under Kyoto. Of course, anyone can set lofty goals, and China's still aiming to be the world's largest polluter either way, but the signs are far more encouraging than one would expect.

Anyway, it's not surprising that China's starting to take global warming seriously (surely people have noticed the Gobi desert edge closer and closer to Beijing each year). The trick is getting people in Washington, D.C., to notice. Plenty of people in Congress still oppose climate-change legislation on the grounds that it would be useless so long as China refuses to act. But that seems to be changing.