In December 2015, Beijing issued its first-ever “red alert” for smog, its highest air pollution warning, which closed schools and restricted the number of cars on the road. Less than two weeks later, it issued its second.

January 7, 2016 could hardly have been worse in this thunderously beautiful, water-parched, and economically reeling nation of 55 million residents at the bottom of Africa.

The good news out of Paris is that the world is finally getting serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Here are a few reasons to cheer and one quibble.

The recent news that China has been underreporting its already globe-leading coal consumption by nearly 20 percent for the last decade underscores the scale of its air pollution crisis.

The renewable energy sector has reached a critical inflection point where costs are competitive with fossil fuels and investment is ramping up in a big way, said more than a dozen experts at a day-long conference co-hosted by ECSP and the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Global Climate Change on October 27.

The world has entered a new energy era. Last year, for the first time in four decades, the global economy grew without an increase in CO2 emissions, according to the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21^st Century.