India and China initiate domestic climate change action

The developed world reacted with consternation to India's announcement that they would accept no greenhouse gas emissions limits from the international community, so it's great news to see that a domestic cap-and-trade system has been proposed:

India has approved in principle new trading plans centred on energy efficiency as part of efforts to shift to a greener economy to fight climate change, opening up a potential market worth more than $15 billion by 2015.

Even better, China appears to be taking its own steps in the right direction:

China's top legislature, for the first time in its history, is specifically addressing climate change with the review of a draft resolution, after hearing a report on the growing environmental problem Monday.

Ni Yuefeng, a vice-chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) environmental and resources protection committee, said the resolution shows the NPC is taking the issue seriously. The details of the resolution are expected to be on the agenda today.

The resolution will pave the way for future environmental legislation, Yang Fuqiang, director of global climate change solutions at environmental group WWF, told China Daily Monday.

This is in fact doubly good news, as not only does it signal greater willingness by the two most populous countries to take action to control their own emissions, but it also weakens the arguments of those Americans who would protest that the U.S. "taking the lead" on emissions reduction wouldn't have any impact. Simplistic game theory says so... but luckily that doesn't appear to be holding in this case.

P.S. I was once eating dinner in Beijing when they "made it rain" (see picture with the linked article), and the results were pretty astounding - a torrential downpour kept us in the restaurant for the next three hours.