Beijing's eerily mild winter has provoked anxious media coverage in the Chinese capital. In India, the melting of the Himalayan glaciers that feed the country's great river systems is alarming policymakers. The world's two fastest-growing large economies are growing increasingly conscious of the global warming in which their rapid development is playing a part.

The politics of pollution has also been brought home in recent weeks with the publication of the report of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - containing a fresh and, in Beijing and New Delhi, unwelcome focus on the role of the two Asian behemoths.