Transcript

[DRIVING IN CAR]

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH

In cities all over the developed world, millions of ordinary households produce great quantities of carbon dioxide simply by going about their daily lives.

So far it's the Western world which has produced the majority of the greenhouse gases.

[RIDING BICYCLES]

But that is set to change.

Meet Mr and Mrs Tam.

They are a fictional couple living in an average Chinese suburb. At present, they use only a seventh of the energy consumed by the Carbon family.

But life for the Tams is changing fast.

And they, together with 1.3 billion Chinese, are heading for a more energy-intensive lifestyle.

Mr. Tam has got a new job, and it comes with a flat in the latest upmarket development, complete with state-of-the-art energy-hungry fittings.

To fuel their economic boom, China has one main cheap source of energy, coal.

Coal is the most carbon dioxide polluting source of energy we have.

Currently China is planning to build a large coal-fired power plant every week for the next seven years.

In as little as 20 years, China is likely to become the world's number one greenhouse gas emitter.

There is an explosion in energy consumption worldwide. And by 2050, we're on course to have doubled the amount we emit.