On the wall in a Beijing subway Line 4 station, a dozen posters feature beautiful scenes at risk of being destroyed by climate change, like arctic ice-caps and herds of penguins. The posters read, "Low-carbon life, walk your talk."

Recently, there has been much talk about climate change in China. Awareness-raising ads like the subway posters are common in public places and on the Internet.

Yet, even though ordinary urban Chinese are aware of the problem, it is not easy for many of them to walk the talk.

Prof. Chen Ying considers herself very climate conscious. She works for the Beijing-based Research Center for Sustainable Development under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a climate change think-tank.

Living a low-carbon life lacked support, Chen said and cited household heating as an example.

"I want to turn my heating down but I can't, simply because the system was not designed to be adjustable," she said.

In China, central heating is supplied by thermal power stations and community boilers, and channeled to households with little regard to user demand.

Users are charged according to the area of their apartment, rather than actual consumption, which Chen said lessened users' willingness to save energy.

An increasing number of real estate projects have installed household adjustable gas heaters in the last two years, but the majority of families still have non-adjustable central heating.

"In China, the infrastructure in many fields does not support a low-carbon lifestyle," Chen said.

In many aspects of everyday life, from heating to garbage recycling, people do not have the necessary technology or economic incentive to decrease their carbon output, she said.

"In the case of central heating, people have no choice."

However, there are also cases where people do have choices but they still opt out of decreasing their carbon usage for understandable reasons.

Yan Qiang, a 30-year-old bank employer, seldom takes public transport after buying a car.

"I can not stand Beijing's public transport system," he said. "The subway's reach is limited. Buses are very unpredictable, crowded, hot in summer and freezing in winter as many don't have air-conditioning or heating."

Beijing now has nine subway lines but a large part of the city is still not connected by them. By 2015, at least ten lines more will be added.

In addition, commuters are frustrated by the poor design of subway transfers.

"You have to walk more than ten minutes to transfer from Line 2to Line 13 at Xizhimen Station. It is really annoying," Yan said.

As most subway lines and buses close at 11:00 PM, late sleepers like Yan would prefer driving when hanging out with friends late at night.

Li Xun, secretary-general of the Chinese Society for Urban Studies, told Xinhua, "Chinese used to lead a low-carbon life when the country was not so developed. Now, with cost being not such a concern, people can afford a more comfortable life."

If public services were not that good, it was easy for high income earners to turn away from leading a low-carbon life, he said.

Despite the government campaign to promote public transport and bicycles, the number of vehicles on the roads has continued to increase.

"Big city authorities have missed a good chance to promote public transport," Li said. "Beijing should have built more subway lines ten years ago. Now the situation is like opening Pandora's box."

The city's roads are no longer easy for pedestrians and bikers to use.

Wang Xiaojun, chief media officer with Green Peace's Beijing office, bikes 30 to 40 minutes to work every day. The ride is neither comfortable nor safe.

"Cars turn right arbitrarily at intersections, putting bikers' safety at risk," he said.

However, he sticks to biking and taking the subway occasionally to reduce his carbon footprint.

"Taking public transport is not always perfectly comfortable. It will take time for it to improve, but we'd better act now."

He believed lots of little steps could make a huge difference, such as switching incandescent bulbs to LED ones, avoiding using disposable chopsticks, and turning off computers when leaving the office.

Regarding these things, Wang argued that public discussions were not robust enough.

Chen agreed with him that a lot of work needed to be done to raise awareness and much room remained for behavior change.

"To reduce emissions doesn't mean you have to give up your comfortable life. But how much inconvenience you are ready to take really depends on your awareness," she said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 11, 2010)