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China Earth

As China Boomed, It Didn't Take Climate Change Into Account. Now It Must. (nytimes.com) 82

China's breathtaking economic growth created cities ill-equipped to face extreme weather. Last week's dramatic floods showed that much will have to change. From a report: China's breakneck growth over the last four decades erected soaring cities where there had been hamlets and farmland. The cities lured factories, and the factories lured workers. The boom lifted hundreds of millions of people out of the poverty and rural hardship they once faced. Now those cities face the daunting new challenge of adapting to extreme weather caused by climate change, a possibility that few gave much thought to when the country began its extraordinary economic transformation. China's pell-mell, brisk urbanization has in some ways made the challenge harder to face.

No one weather event can be immediately linked to climate change, but the storm that flooded Zhengzhou and other cities in central China last week, killing at least 69 as of Monday, reflects a global trend of extreme weather that has seen deadly flooding recently in Germany and Belgium, and severe heat and wildfires in Siberia. The flooding in China, which engulfed subway lines, washed away roads and cut off villages, also highlights the environmental vulnerabilities that accompanied the country's economic boom and could yet undermine it. China has always had floods, but as Kong Feng, then a public policy professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, wrote in 2019, the flooding of cities across China in recent years is "a general manifestation of urban problems" in the country.

The vast expansion of roads, subways and railways in cities that swelled almost overnight meant there were fewer places where rain could safely be absorbed -- disrupting what scientists call the natural hydrological cycle. Faith Chan, a professor of geology with the University of Nottingham in Ningbo in eastern China, said the country's cities -- and there are 93 with populations of more than a million -- modernized at a time when Chinese leaders made climate resiliency less of a priority than economic growth. "If they had a chance to build a city again, or to plan one, I think they would agree to make it more balanced," said Mr. Chan, who is also a visiting fellow at the Water@Leeds Research Institute of the University of Leeds.

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As China Boomed, It Didn't Take Climate Change Into Account. Now It Must.

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  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday July 30, 2021 @03:08PM (#61639437)

    What China does generally, is say they are going to do a thing, in order for other countries to get into a weaker position - then china ignores whatever it is they said they would do, and does what it wants to instead.

    In this particular case, they said they were cutting back on coal but boy are they building out coal plants instead [yale.edu].

    So you can say what China "must" do but how will you make them listen? They are very much in control of what they will and will not do, and at this point who has any real leverage over them?

    • Stop buying chinese crap and stop making your crap there. Too bad your bussiness will suffer, its being subidized by our flailing enviornment and i have no say in that. Those sneakers should not cost 35 dollars. Price in the damage caused making this trash such that sustainably produced goods become a deal.
      • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday July 30, 2021 @03:31PM (#61639559)

        Stop buying chinese crap and stop making your crap there

        I think a lot of companies would like to stop, but in some cases manufacturing whatever it is might be near impossible outside China...

        We need to figure out how to bring back the things China is doing into other countries so that companies can have real options, at scale. But it would take a very long time to really get such an effort moving.

        Even then China has a bit of a leg up because while the rest of the world has been dancing around China has been snarfing up a lot of raw materials - like the fact that China is the source of 85% of rare earths [scmp.com], soon to be higher as they take over Afghanistan [foreignpolicy.com] (the U.S. at any time could have taken a similar path to win over Afghanistan by making them rich, and chose not to).

        Afghanistan has roughly 3 Trillion dollars in rare earths [thehill.com] alone... and lots of other resources that could be mined.

        • MTBI + MW = $15.00 / hr.

          Means Tested Basic Income of $12.00 / hr Lower Minimum Wage to $3.00 / hr

          Nationwide, poorest workers get a huge raise, this includes service workers. Mandate full bennies for these workers, even for part time. Healthcare through extending single-payer / medicare, PTO, sick leave, etc.

          Mandate 10% over salary paid in stock grants or other forms of company ownership.

          Pay for this by restructuring existing non-healthcare related welfare programs under the single umbrella, ga
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      Unfortunately there is the ingrained mentality among many Chinese, when something is available for free, to take as much as possible for yourself without regard to others.
      This is true especially amongst older Chinese who experienced the hardships of Mao's cultural devolution and have the survival instinct to hoard as much as possible in their DNA. Whoever saw how a group of Chinese tourists behaves at the buffet of a restaurant knows this to be true.

      If you apply this mentality to the exploitation of the env

      • Why are you defending your racism? If people of my same race behaved that same way Id resent them just as much. Nothing to do with race.
        • It's not racism, it's "culturalism". Their DNA isn't making them do it, it's the long tradition in (parts of) Asia of such behavior being deemed acceptable. Perhaps he's seeing the same thing that I see biweekly in the SF Bay area: a steady procession of Mercedes- Benz, Lexus, BMW's, etc. cruising through the local food banks at every opportunity.
      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Yeah this bit "instinct to hoard as much as possible in their DNA" super racist. To be in the DNA it must have repeated over many generations with the non hoarders being eliminated and not breeding and the hoarders breeding. Simply insufficient generational cycles for that to happen. However with the White Anglo Saxon, there have been many generations of the monarchy raping the peasantry, actually raping juveniles (to avoid STDs) and in large number, for that psychopathic monarchy gene to spread (refuse and

        • by quenda ( 644621 )

          Yeah this bit "instinct to hoard as much as possible in their DNA" super racist. To be in the DNA it must have repeated over many generations with the non hoarders being eliminated and not breeding and the hoarders breeding.

          Well obviously that would be silly! Have you never heard "in their DNA" used as a metaphor before? I thought is was abundantly clear.
          It is an idiom: https://idioms.thefreedictiona... [thefreedictionary.com]

          It was however an unfortunate choice of idiom, as we have readers here for whom English is not their first language, and others disposed to see "racists under the bed" (another idiom) at every opportunity. No "racial" character was actually implied, if you read the context.

    • but how will you make them listen?

      Perhaps by stopping the hypocrisy and setting an example.

      America's per capita CO2 emissions are twice that of China's.

      • America's per capita CO2 emissions are twice that of China's.

        Maybe true in absolute terms, but the thing is the U.S. has in recent years been on a steady decline in CO2 emissions [eia.gov] - while China has been increasing [iea.org] over the same period.

        The U.S. is cutting back, even as China ramps up.

        How is that not already setting an example?

        It's not realistic to expect a country to drop CO2 emissions in half overnight.

        • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday July 30, 2021 @04:46PM (#61639961)

          The U.S. is cutting back, even as China ramps up.

          It is easier for a glutton to cut back than a thin man.

          It's not realistic to expect a country to drop CO2 emissions in half overnight.

          There are still plenty of 4-ton SUVs rolling off American assembly lines. Perhaps we should fix that before we preach to others.

          • There are still plenty of 4-ton SUVs rolling off American assembly lines. Perhaps we should fix that before we preach to others.

            The heaviest SUV in the USA is a loaded Suburban at 6,585 lb. The Hummer H1 was over 8k lb at the curb, but it's been out of production since 2002 (the only year even vaguely worth owning without modification due to having a real motor, not that Detroit 6.5 pile of shit.) They are still making humvees for the military, but only 100 per year — they are in the process of replacing them with M-ATVs, which are armored and weigh 27,500 lb.

            With that said... yeah, this whole light truck loophole is stupid an

        • China "ramping" up is a consequence of everyone buying their stuff.

          They are world leaders in solar and probably going as fast as they can to make and install renewables.

          China's problems are like trying to turn a tanker, its huge and will take a long time to turn.
          • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            You got it backwards. They are ramping up because everyone started instituting rules on environmental damage. So industries offshored to where this doesn't happen. For example, there are plenty of rare earth deposits in US. None are exploited to any meaningful extent because of just environmentally damaging separation processes are.

            And their "world leadership in solar and wind" comes because they need ALL the power they can get. Which is why they're also world leaders in coal, natgas, nuclear, hydro and so

        • I thought US approach of cutting back on CO2 was to make everything in China. So you move production to China and then accuse them of generating too much CO2. Work for me.

    • The only actual way to make China listen would be to move manufacturing out of China. But to do that would require first world Nations to be more concerned with climate change than short-term profits. This isn't going to happen not just because the C-levels won't allow it but because your average Joe isn't going to risk it.

      Sure the average Joe would like manufacturing to come back to their country, but in order to actually accomplish that they would have to make pretty large-scale changes to their polit
      • It would be difficult but not impossible to change.
        For years I've said that the issue is perverse incentive structures that only the upper class has. Change those structures and everything else follows. Example:

        We can eliminate the corporate and overseas taxation altogether (with its reams of tax code and loopholes) if we:

        permanently harmonize labor with capital gains
        outlaw stock buy-backs as a form of manipulation. It was illegal up to the 1980's.
        outlaw executive stock compensation and mandate cash salary

    • So just like the West then? Or did you forget all the pollution in the industrialization era?
  • by IWantMoreSpamPlease ( 571972 ) on Friday July 30, 2021 @03:13PM (#61639461) Homepage Journal

    "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths (is) a statistic."
    Somehow I doubt the CCP give's a damn about the number of people dying in their country due to climate-related issues.

  • ...by putting the Uighurs of Northwestern (interior) China in internment camps. I don't know enough about the geography though.
  • Didn't China just announce a week or so ago that they've simply moved their self appointed Paris Accord goal from 2030 out to 2050?
    It's clear the CCP is never honest about their efforts toward Paris Accords but this is a remarkably brazen act to just flip the universe the bird, just because they can.
  • Maybe if we'd considered China way back in the Tokyo accords, eh?

    ie as if it was REALLY a problem, and not circumscribed by politics.

  • Why should they? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
    Why should anybody?

    It's not like anyone will ever personally be held accountable for their actions.
    • The same could be said of Covid-19.
      Really is there anything since world war two that people have personally been held accountable for?

      Fortunately nature itself doesn't have any of these difficulties for we ALL will be held accountable for our actions.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    The question is simply this, WHICH COUNTRIES ACTUALLY DID TAKE ACCOUNT OF CLIMATE CHANGE? Because from what I can see no country took into account climate change.

  • In the west, letting liberals complain will eventually push politicians to enact policy to fight climate change. The fact is that in china, if you complain about policy you get banned from using public services (social credit garbage). I doubt china will ever change because the party cant be protested against.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Chinese General Secretary Xi "Mr. Shithole" Jinping announced today that the glorious Chinese people hope to construct Green Dong. "Based off our one of a king Small Dong technology, Green Dong will be world-changing technology to save us from the horrors of climate change. Through a network of carbon dioxide absorbers, chemical catalysts, and Asian ingenuity, Green Dong will convert life-robbing carbon dioxide into life-giving oxygen." When asked what would become of all the carbon byproduct of the Green D
  • Really? (Score:1, Funny)

    by fiddley ( 834032 )

    China is a world leader in renewables. They're having their industrial revolution emitting a fraction of the pollution any of the established economies did. We should look to them for guidance instead of "America, fuck yeah"

  • by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Friday July 30, 2021 @04:02PM (#61639709)
    China looks after it's elites and our elites love them because they can get cheap non-union labor, even though we now have funded a huge nuclear arsenal for a country that hates us. Welcome to the real world!
  • Don't "follow the science", that doesn't tell us what we need to do. Engineering tells us what we need to do. An engineering analysis of the solutions before us tells us that without nuclear fission power we will fail in lowering CO2 emissions.

    It took only 50 years but we have an agreement from both major political parties in the USA that we need nuclear power. That tells me that the US federal government is finally taking global warming seriously. I'm seeing the UK not give up on nuclear power in spite

  • This lesson keeps coming back time and time again. What will they do? Just like everyone else they will rebuild in the same spot.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    This video contains many shocking clips of the damage.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
    7:09 in the video shows authorities trying to hide the flowers left as tributes for the dead, because they would reveal the official death statistic is a lie.

  • by BytePusher ( 209961 ) on Friday July 30, 2021 @06:02PM (#61640217) Homepage
    For the last 100 years it didn't take climate change into account. Now it must.
  • "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."

  • The US didn't care about the climate when it did its major growth. So why can't others?

  • Forget global warming. 1 Barrel of oil when consumed produces 1/2 bbl of WATER as a greenhouse gas. This formally trapped water tends to head to the equator. The British did well in Malaysia building canals for mega rain dumps, and Singapore. Vietnam and Thailand, decided, Nah, canals need steel and concrete and too expensive to build. Better to use this 'idle land'. China has not expanded canals and waterways anywhere near what must be done, because if you build, the land cannot absorb the water, nor expos
  • China has been a country for centuries because of one main reason. Their #1 focus is the survival of China. The health and welfare of other countries, other people, hell, even their OWN people, are secondary to that. There is no one who can make them change, and it is not in their own interest to change, so they will not change.

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