Sui shou guan deng, the four Chinese characters meaning "Turn off the light," were once printed by light switches in schools, offices and many other public places in China.

It was a time when electricity shortages existed even in urban centers. At a very young age, we learned to "turn off the light" whenever we were the last one to leave a room.

Today, we no longer see sui shou guan deng even in schools. We don't need the four characters to blemish the otherwise clean whitewash or even elegantly painted walls in corridors of office and apartment buildings.

In their stead are electronic sensors that switch lights on and off at the sound of clapping or footsteps.

Despite the technical marvel, the good tradition of saving electricity or energy that we learned when we were young seems waning.

The sad fact is especially evident when new buildings are erected in precious potholes of precious urban space without regard to residents or office workers living or working in the neighborhood.

I myself am a victim as a new high-rise office building with glass curtain walls soars outside my office. Sunlight reflected from the glass glares straight into my office and my eyes.

I have no way out but to pull down the shades to ward off the natural light and rely on artificial electrical light in what has become a cave-like office.

But my plight seems insignificant in comparison with some residents in a high-rise residential zone in Beijing.

One family, whose bedroom window once looked out onto the rooftop balcony, now finds the natural light blocked by new makeshift housing.

They have to burn electricity just to use the bedroom during the day.

In another apartment, the residents have to put on padded coats or turn on the electrical heating as the room temperature drops several degrees Celsius. The cause: The people who constructed a new house on the roof of the high-rise got rid of their neighbor's insulation and even waterproofing.

The larger issue here is whether the builders obtained a legal permit to construct additional housing on top of the high-rise. Apparently they did not, as the local urban management bureau has brought the case to court.

But urban planners and managers as well as architects and construction bosses have ignored an even more pertinent issue. The point is whether the new buildings are green energy saving not just on their own but whether they cause extra energy consumption in neighboring buildings.

Their ignorance is due to the fact that our good tradition of saving energy is still largely for the sake of saving money, not necessarily for burning less fossil fuel and for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

As a matter of fact, the conventional GDP, upon which we measure our economic growth and performance, is still calculated by what we produce, regardless of the cost in natural resources.

Even the officials who are pushing for an environmentally and ecologically friendly development model find it hard to implement a green GDP, let alone the city planners or builders down the administrative ranks.

But more than 2,500 scientists worldwide who are still working on the global climate change report have sounded the alarm: We don't have much time to continue burning fossil fuels and increasing carbon dioxide emissions.

So it is time for government at all levels to work out preferential policies and concrete production and construction codes that enforce the use of renewable energy resources and energy efficiency.

Hopefully, the codes for green construction projects will take into account not just the building but the building's effect on its neighbors. Planning environmentally sound buildings extends to avoiding additional energy burdens for others. This includes not turning off their natural light.

(China Daily 02/08/2007 page10)