China's seriousness is our best hope 中国的态度是人类的希望

As a young boy growing up in the North of England,each weekday morning I'd go to my grandmother's house. We'd drink cups of teaand chat about such trivialities as trouble a nascent 8-year-old's mind, untilthe time came for me to walk up the village to primary school.

For the life of me, I'm sorry to say I can't remembermuch of what we discussed. But there's one conversation that I will always recall.One day, I declared to my grandma that when I grew up, I would move to America ‑and what's more, I even promised to take her with me.

It was the 1990s, the pre-internet era, and all I knewof the United States was what I had learned from TV shows or books. It seemed awondrous place, filled with opportunity. "The land of the free and thehome of the brave".

Fast forward 20 years and everything has changed. Notonly in the US, but in my home country too. New leaders have swept to power onthe back of widespread discontent with a system that no longer seems to beworking for the good of the people. Wages stagnate as the secure jobs ofyesteryear dry up and for the first time in generations, it's predicted that thechildren born today in much of the West will be less well off than theirparents.

Against this background, it's easy to see how supportcan take root for the kinds of isolationist and xenophobic attitudescharacterized by Brexit bogeyman Nigel Farage and Republican president-electDonald Trump. They offer people easy answers to complicated, scary questions.

Yet scariest of all, for all of humanity, is thecallous disregard these new leaders seem to hold for the health and wellbeingof our planet.

Trump is not only a climate change denier, in November2012 he stated that "the concept of global warming was created by and forthe Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive".

Despite being the anointed leader of one of theworld's biggest greenhouse gas emitters, he has threatened to pull out of lastyear's historic Paris climate agreement and leave in tatters the commitment madethere to limit global warming.

Needless to say, the consequences of this could beapocalyptic. It led China's Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin to remind the US,earlier this month, that it was Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George BushSr who first initiated climate change negotiations.

While for environmental governance expert DeborahSeligsohn from the University of California at San Diego: “not only is climatechange no Chinese hoax, but Chinese seriousness may be our best hope."

Of course, no one can say with any certainty what thenext few years or decades will bring. But if I were a young boy again today,looking for leadership in this world, I scarcely think it would be to the Westthat my hopeful gaze would turn.