Yan Li - Beijing, China

Almost all of the people Climate Stories talks to are lay people with no particular interest in or knowledge about climate change. However, Yan Li, who has been working as a climate change campaigner for Greenpeace China for two years has some very important things to say about what climate change really means for China.

Yan Li says that China will be one of the countries worst affected by climate change. It's already triggered droughts in the North but flash floods and typhoons in the South. These extreme weather events are set to get much worse. Most projections now foretell a bleak water situation for China. No water means no development so it's the hottest issue.

Most people in Beijing don't realise it yet but their water supply is severely under threat right now. The reservoir that keeps the capital in fresh water is now at a quarter of its usual capacity. It used to be open to the public to visit but now people are kept away so they can't see how bad the situation has become. There's a huge contrast between the situation in the big cities in China and rural life. Yan Li illustrates this with the example of the wealthy city of Guangzhou where the people have everything they want and the surrounding countryside, where the people have no water and are very worried about their futures.

Heavy rain of 100-200mm an hour of rain is common in some of the Southern parts of the country but Xinjiang has had no rain, especially in the Gobi region. Yan met some people there who had no need for a roof on their house because it never rained. In some areas though climate change is improving people's lives. It has brought rain to previously arid areas, so more food can now be grown. Ultimately though, everyone will be worse off as the productivity of China's land declines overall.

Yan Li was disappointed when China's target to produce 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2010 was downgraded to non-fossil fuel sources. However she tells me there are other more encouraging signs that China's leaders are taking the issue seriously. Greenpeace are pushing for the environmental cost of coal to be included in coal pricing by way of a carbon tax and the government are currently holding an online debate about it.

The government are also investing in the development of the as yet mythical carbon capture and storage technology, as well as carbon labelling but Yan Li isn't convinced how effective either will be. There is apparently evidence that people here are prepared to pay more for environmental products though.

Greenpeace are currently planning a 'virtual march' through China to raise awareness of climate change. At the moment though Chinese people don't understand what civil society or campaigns really mean for them. The first NGO, an environmental education charity called Friends of Nature, was established in China only in 1994 and there are many restrictions on such organisations here. It's a big dream for her that one day there will be a big movement of people in China on environmental issues.

With water linking climate change with food security, poverty, health and development, Yan Li believes climate change should be a much bigger issue in the minds of every Chinese person. The time to think small is over.

Eric - Beijing, China

As we step off the train from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia we're immediately dazzled by the realisation that the city in front of us is not the Beijing that lives in our heads. China's capital has almost completed its transformation from a sprawling city of traditional ricketty wooden buildings in labarynthine 'hutong' alleyways to concrete and steel mega-city of epic proportions that makes London and New York look like toy towns.

Beijing old and new

My first interviewee in China is Eric, a 20 year computer science student in Beijing. He's originally from a village outside Qingdao, the city famous for producing TsingTao beer, but has been in the big city for three years now. He's anticipating that China will be warmer, which won't be a good thing for his country and especially not for his adopted city; Beijing in the summer is mind-meltingly hot. Eric believes that air and water pollution are more of an issue here than climate change though and I can see why. Though we are visiting at supposedly the time of year when Beijing air is the clearest, the ever-present thick haze tricks me into thinking my glasses always need cleaning.

Eric & Emma

Eric drops the unsurprising but nonetheless depressing news that Chinese people are not worried about climate change. He maintains that China's priority is the economy. His friends are too busy with studying to worry too much about climate change. A poor student from the countryside must study from 5am until 8pm in order to get into a university.

A guard at the Forbidden Palace

The government should be responsible for addressing climate change, according to Eric. They should control the number of cars and encourage people to use public transport and bicycles. When asked about renewables he says solar might be good but he is concerned that China has built too many hydro-electric dams, which are now causing ecological damage.

Beijing's smog can at least make for a lovely picture

The interview ends on a much more positive note than it begins though. Eric tells me most emphatically that he thinks we must change our ways for the future. That we need to reduce pollution and make things cleaner. He uses public transport although he admits he's too poor to have a choice about this and the lights in his dormitory and in his family home are low energy too.

It might also be that Eric is unnecessarily pessimistic about his fellow citizens. Bearing in mind that a recent study showed that 62% of Chinese people wanted their government to take more action on climate change. Whether their government will heed their request is another matter but the will, it appears, is there.

From Russia with love

On 13 September 2009 I sit down to lunch in Uglich, near Moscow, with six twenty-something Muscovites, who have agreed to speak to me about their thoughts and feelings on climate change. They are clever, funny, politically aware and, well, cool. As is befitting of a society with so recent a history of state propaganda, they are suspicious of what the media has to offer.

Someone says they think climate change is a big problem for Russia but this is contentious and someone else thinks the country has more pressing issues. Another proposes it might improve the nation's situation, with better weather conditions. According to a recent report from the World Bank Russia has more to lose than most countries from climate change.

Tanya, Lola, Will, Fedya, Shev, Emma & Julia

I'm told that people care more about it in Western Europe and North America than here and that this is because these countries don't have real problems to worry about. One girl likens this to the story of her friend, who on her return to Russia after several years in the US, was shocked to discover a general lack of concern about cholesterol.

One of the group believes climate change to be a natural process, that the human role is exaggerated and we overestimate the significance of the time in which we now live. Another thinks it might be little more than a money making exercise, likening the green industry to the producers of flu vaccinations, whom she believes have exploited the current swine flu panic for profit. Bearing in mind that the richest companies are still those in the business of extracting oil and that most people who work in the environment sector do so for low wages or even for free, I'm not sure this accusation is fair.

Renewable energy is not a popular option here and someone espouses that frustratingly common myth that wind generators don't 'payback' the energy used to create them I can't help myself but interjecting to correct them. Nuclear is a significant energy source here and oil is cheap in Russia. They all tell me they think the oil will run out though.

Julia, Tanya, Fedya & Will

The group agree that weather patterns have noticeably changed in recent years and that this is a common topic of discussion amongst the people they know. They say there is no longer a need to wear the heavy winter clothes of previous years but that they do not know whether this is a long term trend or a short term blip, acknowledging the difference between climate and weather.

What I have not come across in this interview is general apathy, or the refutation that climate change is happening at all. This group leave me with the sense that climate change is more of a current issue in Russia than it might initally appear, as born out by their government's recent major u-turn in their policy. I have only just scratched the surface of Russian psychology but I can already see that it may be more difficult for my British brain to decode than I had bargained for.