The Gristmill has a nice piece about the potential for [more] sustainable development in China. The introductory snark is delicious, but the links are where the real meat is.

The answer is not to try to stop China from developing -- as if such a thing were remotely in the realm of possibility -- or to demonize it. The answer is to do everything we can to try to make China a showcase for every sustainable development trick in the book. The Chinese want prosperity, just as we do, so let's help them leapfrog, get there without sucking up the rest of the world's oil and accelerating climate change. Given its closed political system, there's a limit to what Western greens can do, but at the very least we should be paying attention and doing what we can. There's evidence that China's government gets this, anyway.

I’m familiar with the economic principles behind this idea – it’s the same philosophy that’s behind the Clean Development Mechanism built into the Kyoto Protocol (which is worth knowing about even if only to wave in the face of naysayers who dishonestly claim that Kyoto is a strict, command-and-control treaty) – but I hadn’t heard the word ‘leapfrogging’ attached to it before. I love the term, though I have to agree with the first commenter on the Gristmill piece, who points out that China currently has a disincentive to discuss sustainability with any representative of the United States due our lack of credibility on the issue.