An ambitious deal in Paris is needed to boost green growth

Also on Monday, the chief executives of 78 major companies, with combined annual turnover of $2.1 trillion, issued an open letter urging world leaders to seize the chance to strive for an ambitious deal featuring effective climate policies that would trigger low-carbon investment and transform current emission patterns at a significant scale to help create both economic growth and jobs.

Though business leaders' call for including the pricing of carbon emissions as part of policies to curb global warming smacks of self-interest, the recent Volkswagen emissions scandal has laid bare the very high stakes for enterprises. And if such a leading global automaker such as Volkswagen could keep cheating on emission for profits, in retrospect, the failure of the highly anticipated climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009 is not really surprising.

But the growing number of consumers for green technology and products has injected extra impetus into global efforts to build a low-carbon future by reversing the world's centuries-old reliance on fossil fuels.

In this sense, Chinese consumers have already shown remarkable potential in taking the lead to speed up the transformation of the world economy to a greener future.

When I went to Copenhagen in 2009 to cover the climate talks, electric cars were shown to the media as a kind of fancy high-tech luxury.

Now, as I pass the public charging poles near my home in Beijing, surrounded by more and more electric cars I have become quite confident in telling my 8-year-old son that our next car will definitely be an electric one.

Sales of new energy cars almost tripled in China in the first ten months of this year. And the huge potential of the Chinese market ought to be a good reason not only for automakers at home and abroad to go green as fast as possible but also for world leaders to try and reach a deal in Paris.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily.

zhuqiwen@chinadaily.com.cn