THE villagers of Dingjiayan subsist on corn, potatoes, sunflowers and the few vegetables they grow.

THE history of economics has been, among other things, a story of learning to care less about land. The physiocrats of 18th-century France saw it as the primary guarantor of wealth.

BUY land, advised Mark Twain; they’re not making it any more.

MAHARASHTRA, 2010. In a village 130km (80 miles) from Mumbai, the head of a nursery is weighing a child. Four years old, she is just 10kg (22lb), two-thirds of what she should be.

FOR years, it seemed like carbon-dioxide emissions rose relentlessly, whatever the world’s level of economic activity and however much countries spent on no- or low-carbon energy.

AT LAST year’s ten-day annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the prime minister, Li Keqiang, declared “war” on pollution.

TROPICAL cyclones are frequent in the south-west Pacific between November and April, with an average of ten a year. They are born near the equator and scythe southward.

GRUMBLING about the semi-permanent smog that cloaks Chinese cities has grown louder in recent years.

BENEATH the frozen flanks of East Asia’s most revered mountain, in China’s north-eastern Jilin province, a huddle of sleek new processing plants will soon be packaging its precious essence: spring

THE CHEAPEST AND cleanest energy choice of all is not to waste it. Progress on this has been striking yet the potential is still vast.

Pages