A rough yardstick for identifying which Asian countries make the biggest ripples in Cancún is the number of journalists who crowd around the spokesperson immediately after a press conference.
Japanese NGOs feel that Prime Minister Naoto Kan's categorical statement in parliament on Monday that his government would not under any circumstances be party to a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in that historic city in 1997, went "beyond irony".
People living in the Himalayan region are increasingly confronted by rising temperatures and glaciers melting at an unprecedented rate, threatening their very survival. This much the world already knows.
Much of the discussion in Copenhagen has revolved around targets and deadlines for cutting carbon emissions. But a weekend seminar in the idyllic Danish island of Samsoe, titled "Future Energy," helped journalists locate the problem in the context of the world's biggest emitters.
China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, has stolen a march over the rest of Asia in unilaterally declaring its carbon intensity cuts a day after President Barack Obama did late last month for the U.S.