'The end is nigh' - Liu

Peggy Liu said she believes the world may have only five years to avert an environmental disaster.

The internationally renowned environmental champion, who now heads a joint Sino-American clean energy body, said that time is running out fast.

"The scary thing is that five years is just the blink of an eye in energy terms. Two years ago, we perhaps thought we had 10 years," she said in an interview in Beijing last week.

Liu's key focus is clean energy and its efficient use, a major plank of which is making sure that new buildings that are being constructed now use energy efficiently.

An adviser to former US President Bill Clinton's climate change initiative and honored last year by Time magazine as an "environmental hero", Liu now chairs JUCCCE (Joint US-China Cooperation on Clean Energy), a non-profit body aimed at pushing the use of clean technologies in China.