Green roofs? China's headlong rush into green building? Two great tastes that taste great together?

"Downtown Beijing is too crowded to insert more green belts, so we'll try it on the roofs," Yang Zhihua, an official with the city's parks and woods bureau, was quoted as saying. ...Rooftop "green belts" could sprout on 30 percent of the city's high rises and 60 percent of its lower buildings by 2008, Yang said.

It's all part of an effort to "green" Beijing before the 2008 Olympics (green olympics being all the rage).

Skeptics will raise two questions: one, the degree to which Chinese government proclaimations can be considered credible, given the lack of free press, public accountability or dissent in that nation, and two, whether (even if these Beijing-centered programs deliver as promised) China is ready to confront its much larger, national environmental problems -- massive pollution with widespread health and social impacts, worsening desertification, and seriously unsustainable energy and resource policies.

That said, the potential for a green China to redefine the planetary future is vast, and growing. We can all hope that these moves in Beijing are real, and that they portend the beginning, not the end, of China's environmental commitment.
(thanks GP!)