With massive floods, mudslides and oil spills unfolding around the country, it seems China’s environmental woes have gone form dire to, well, something worse than dire this summer. Apart from not driving a car and refusing plastic bags at the shops, how can we help improve the situation? An LA Times report earlier this week shows that avoiding the disposable chopsticks beloved by Beijing’s cheap eateries could make a bigger difference than you think.

Unless you’ve been living in a bubble, you know the air’s not that great here. But all of us who’ve been in Beijing a while also know that whining about said air quality is the worst of the expat clichés: we have willingly traded a bit of pulmonary discomfort for the privilege of living in this city of opportunity and excitement.

And so it's always with slight trepidation that I pick up any book about China's environment. It's bad. We get it. But Jonathan Watts, a longtime Guardian reporter and veteran of the China beat, gets it, too, which is why his book about the environment, When a Billion Chinese People Jump: How China Will Save Mankind - Or Destroy It, will soon be a must-have for everyone seeking to understand the shades and layers of China’s environmental challenges and our incredible potential for change.

I’m not what you’d call an environmental role model. I have no idea how big my carbon footprint is, but I doubt I’ve shed the wasteful habits learned in 30 years of life in America, so we’re probably talking Sasquatch proportions. Air conditioning, beef consumption, incandescent lighting – my sins against Gaia are numerous.

TreeHugger, the “one-stop shop for green news, solutions, and product information,” had a post yesterday about Beijing’s contribution to the 350.org International Day of Climate Action last Saturday, October 24.

As loyal Beijingers we understand our fair city is superior to Shanghai in almost every respect, but sadly the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) has concluded Shanghai has it over us in one respect - air quality.