【正文】 tion, quality economic development and other related policy targets. To develop LC economy – background, opportunities and challenges As illustrated above, systematic solutions are required to tackle climate change, due to the plexity of the global climate system as well as its coverage of broad social and economic issues. After nearly two decades’ exploration, human society has realized that in order to effectively mitigate and adapt to climate change, we have to fundamentally reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, which means that we have to achieve the shift to a LC future from the way we produce and consume to how global assets are allocated (including industries, technology, capitals and resources) and how they are transferred. From the perspective of the limited storage capacity of GHGs in the climate system as a global public good, both a high level of human wisdom and a new international climate regime to deal with market failure are required, which also demands the participation of all stakeholders and together they shall charter a new development pathway. Human society has to pay the economic prices to solve climate warming. Thus, the three ?exible “mechanisms” in the Kyoto Protocol ( joint implementation, emissions trading and clean development mechanism) demonstrate a meaningful experiment for the Annex I countries to decrease their emissions reduction costs. What is needed is to move forward from where we are now to explore a more universally applicable mechanism that would effectively allocate the resources among the key responsible stakeholders. The LC development path embodies an integrated solution strategy. It aims to build up a LC society through LC economic development, tries to achieve the restructuring of all the key elements discussed above and offers new opportunities for human society in response to climate change through collaborations. As a fundamental venue to coordinate social and economic development, guarantee energy security and respond to climate change, development of LC economy is gradually gaining the needed consensus from more and more countries. Though without a ?xed academic de?nition, the core of developing a LC economy is to establish a development pathway that has highenergy 4 ef?ciency, lowenergy consumption and low emissions. Under a fair and effective international climate regime, the ef?ciency of energy exploration, generation, transmission, transformation and use is expected to be increased greatly and energy consumption greatly reduced, so that the carbon intensity in energy supply for economic growth is dramatically reduced, along with the carbon emissions from energy consumption. Through increasing carbon sink and using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, the GHG emissions from fossil fuels that are hard to reduce can be offset. In the meanwhile, through the establishment of reasonable and fair technology transfer and ?nancial support mechanisms, developing countries can undertake the costs of shifting towards LC patterns while being at the lowest end of the value chain in the international trade structure. The perspectives of development value need to be changed in order to promote the transition of consumption towards a sustainable and LC future. What needs to be clari?ed is that, due to the differences of various countries’ social and economic contexts, the starting points towards a LC future might vary, as might the pursued goals. For developed countries that are taking the lead to mit to reduction targets, their ?rst objective to develop a LC economy is to reduce emissions. For developing countries whose economies are still at a fast growing stage, their ?rst priority is development and their per capita energy consumption is expected to continue to grow. The objectives shall be multiple. At the current stage, it is hard to mainstream the climate change policies domestically. What is possible is to reduce energy intensity and increase carbon productivity in order to gradually decouple economic growth and carbon emissions. What is equally important is that there exist many uncertainties in development of LC economy, particularly for developing countries. Tremendous difficulties and barriers need to be overe in the process. At the international level, the uncertainties of developing LC economy include: Costs and markets – at this moment we could hardly be able to estimate the whole costs that are required to develop a LC economy. It is far from being as simple as calculating the direct costs of adopting LC technologies. It also takes time to establish LC technology and product markets, especially now, when the global ?nancial crisis has hit everyone hard and when no one can give a good estimate about when the world economy could turn around and recover。 though many experts and scholars hold that the response to the longterm climate change c