Zhejiang Girl Speaks at Copenhagen

The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen from December 7 to 18th looked as if it had had nothing to do with a small village in Longyou County in southern Zhejiang， a coastal province in eastern China.

It had something to do with the mountainous village. The 21-year-old Li Yunzhi， a Chinese girl from this village， spoke four minutes on behalf of Chinese students at the conference on December 15.

To the politicians and environmentalists from all over the world， Li Yunzhi spent four minutes talking about how the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty (221-207BC) unified the whole nation and what benefits came out of the unification in a historical perspective. She hoped the moral of the past could give people a sense of urgency to work together in the fight against the climate changes. Her speech won warm applause.

Her parents back in Longyou are very proud of their daughter. In 2005， she passed the national college entrance examination with a brilliant score and matriculated in atmospheric science at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology.

The young girl chose the major largely because the obscure major would probably give her an edge in getting a government job after graduation. However， she fell in love with the science over the four-year college studies. As she was a brilliant student and her English was pretty good， she let some very good job offers go upon graduation and got enrolled into Edinburgh University in Britain in 2009. This time， her master degree study is very fashionable: she now studies carbon management， a graduate course designed to provide a broad and integrated understanding of carbon management and give students a launching pad for careers in carbon and climate change management by business， industry and government.

Li Yunzhi was part of a team given 15 minutes to speak in Copenhagen. Each of the six-member team had separate responsibility. One spoke at the beginning and summarized at the end. Each of the other five told a story about his or her home country and talked about the moral of the story. The team had worked for a month before addressing the Climate Change Conference. They decided upon five concepts: alliance， responsibility， foresight， opportunity and justice. The American student talked about American Dream and then about the concept of justice. The Chilean student cited Easter Island and talked about the concept of foresight. Li Yunzhi was the last speaker. She talked about the First Emperor and about the concept of working together.

During her preparations for Copenhagen， she noticed that Quzhou in southern Zhejiang had had some carbon emission trading. In March， 2006， for example， a Japanese company offered a free-of-charge project to help Quzhou Chemicals renovate its technology for better environmental protection. The Japanese company later bought the right of carbon emission reduced by the project. Li Yunzhi comments that it was a typical trading of carbon emission.

As a Zhejiang native， Li Yunzhi is highly concerned with carbon emission reduction in Zhejiang in general and in Quzhou and Longyou in particular. She hopes what she learns at Edinburgh University can help China reduce carbon emission in future. She wants to contribute to the sustainable growth in Zhejiang and China.