This summer’s heat wave in China was the largest in history. The level of Lake Poyang, the largest in the country, is today a third of the usual. In several provinces the flow of the rivers has been reduced so much that the electrical flow has collapsed. And every time China has power supply problems, it turns to coal, fueling the vicious cycle of climate change.
The records of the Copernicus Climate Change Service show that this summer’s heat waves in Europe were more intense and doubled in duration and territorial scope than those of 2013, until then the largest recorded in the Old Continent. Not since 1884 has the British Isles experienced such a hot summer.
But its dimensions and effects – glacial collapse, forest fires – pale next to what China, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Iran and other Asian and Middle Eastern countries have endured, a region where temperatures are rising. at a rate twice the world average.
The carbon gas emissions of 12 of the 19 countries in the region, which are home to more than 400 million people, already exceed those of India or the EU. These are very arid areas that receive an average of 254 millimeters of rainwater per year, 20% less than 30 years ago.
In New York Times, Matthew Bossons, a Canadian editor who has lived in Shanghai for years, describes his recent vacation trip to Sichuan in search of its fertile valleys crisscrossed by rivers that flow down from the peaks of the Himalayas (हिमालय, where the snow lives, in Sanskrit). Instead, he found desolate landscapes, dry riverbeds, and cities paralyzed by power outages.
“This year, the Yangtze, the third longest river in the world, dropped up to six meters from its usual levels in some sections, making it impracticable for navigation”
The humid lowlands of southwestern China and cities like Chongqing, Nanjing and Wuhan, already famous for their sweltering summers, had been turned into a furnace by a heat wave that lasted from late June to late August and led to The temperature reached 45º in several of the 262 meteorological stations in the country, destroyed crops, unleashed forest fires and caused thousands of deaths from heat stroke.
Each new summer, Bossons writes, is worse than the last. In this year’s river, the Yangtze, the world’s third longest river, dropped up to six meters from its usual levels in some sections, making it impassable for navigation. 80% of world trade is carried out at some point by sea or river, three times more than 30 years ago.
In Sichuan, several mighty mountain rivers have been reduced to streams that could be crossed on foot, collapsing electricity in a region that generates 75% of the energy it consumes in dams and hydroelectric plants. The streets of Chengdu, the province’s capital of 20 million people, were deserted during the day because of the heat and humidity and nearly dark at night because of restrictions.
Droughts, sandstorms and monsoons
In June, Review of Geophysics published a study warning that by the end of the century in Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, among other countries, temperatures could rise five degrees, leading to more intense heat waves, droughts, and sandstorms from Lebanese beaches to deserts Iranians, raising the risks of wars in dispute over the control of the waters and sources of origin of rivers such as the Nile, the Tigris or the Euphrates.
In Southeast Asia, extreme weather events are increasingly disrupting global supply chains. Maximiliano Herrera, a meteorologist who maintains historical statistics of world temperatures, assures that, due to its duration, extension and intensity, this summer’s heat wave in eastern China was the largest in history.
The most vulnerable communities are, as always, the poorest. In Pakistan, which contributes little to climate change, a monster monsoon fueled by warming surface waters from the Indian Ocean this year caused torrential rains that tripled the average volume of the last 30 years. The floods, which covered a third of the territory, claimed a thousand lives, destroyed fields and submerged houses along the banks of the Indus, forcing the displacement of 3.1 million people.
Pakistan has three or four rainy periods a year. This year there were eight. In Sindh, the entire cotton crop and much of the sugarcane crop were lost. Some 3,000 kilometers of roads and 130 bridges disappeared. The damage from the floods ranges between 15,000 and 20,000 million dollars (5% of GDP).
Visual language of climate change
According to James Dalton of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the loss of glaciers, rivers and lakes is “the visual language of climate change.” Natural disasters do not make political distinctions, but they can be especially damaging for authoritarian regimes that base their prestige on their supposed omniscience and social control.
If heat waves continue to start earlier and end later, the risks of the “factory of the world” will become more visible. In Chongqing, a metropolis of 20 million people, thermometers reached 45º for the first time, a temperature that until now was only recorded in the desert areas of Xinjiang.
Extreme heat, evaporation and droughts threaten the hydroelectric supply of southern areas where China’s industrial power is concentrated. The level of Lake Poyang, the largest in the country, is today a third of the usual, which has brought up Buddhist statues that had been submerged for more than 600 years.
According to consulting firm Landau Group, Sichuan’s hydroelectric turbines are running at 20% capacity amid an unprecedented rise in air conditioning consumption. The reserves of the large dams in the south are at half their normal levels. The provinces of Sichuan, Chongqing and Hubei, which are home to 174 million people, export electricity to the east coast.
“Sichuan Hydroelectric Turbines Are Running At 20% Of Capacity Amid Unprecedented Rise In Air Conditioning Consumption”
The Three Gorges Dam and hundreds of smaller ones produce 15% of the country’s electricity, compared to 60% from coal plants, which China is increasingly importing from Russia. The use of trucks instead of riverboats, in turn, has increased the costs of transporting food.
The authorities are resorting to desperate measures. As Elisabeth Braw writes in Foreign PolicySome of them have been pouring 1 billion cubic meters of water into the Yangtze, using tanker trucks to irrigate crops, and injecting silver iodide into clouds to make them rain. But there are no silver bullets. In 2021, Israel, one of the pioneers in “seeding” clouds, abandoned its programs after 50 years of fruitless efforts.
Chronic risks
The environmental crisis also does not distinguish between old and new technologies. In Chengdu, due to restrictions, those who want to recharge the batteries of their electric cars have to wait long hours and even a whole night. Local authorities ordered the closure for more than two weeks of the local plants of Toyota, Volkswagen, CATL and Foxconn.
In August, Changan Automobile produced 100,000 fewer vehicles due to the closure of its plant in Sichuan. According to the Shanghai Metals Market, lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide production fell by 1,250 and 3,050 tons, respectively, in August.
Every time China has power supply problems, it turns to coal, fueling the vicious cycle of climate change. The current energy consumption per capita Chinese is less than half of many industrialized countries, so its demand will hardly reach its peak for at least another decade.
Sichuan had attracted energy-intensive industries by offering them abundant and cheap electricity, leading to waste and waste. If extreme weather events become chronic in China, world trade, which for 14 years has remained almost flat relative to global GDP, will be further strained.
Risk concentration
A recent study by White House economic advisers proposed ways to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. Congress incorporated many of them in the recent Chips and Science Act, which will grant aid to the sector worth 52,000 million dollars. In one of its chapters, the report warned that the current concentration of the industry has made it more vulnerable to climate change, wars and pandemics.
And she is not the only one in danger. In 2018, the World Trade Organization noted that the food trade is especially vulnerable to infrastructure damage and protectionism. India, the world’s largest exporter of rice (40%), has announced restrictions on its exports of wheat, rice and sugar to ensure supplies to its domestic market. In 2020-2021, India exported $8.8 billion worth of rice.
Vietnam and Thailand, other major rice producers, could soon follow suit, exacerbating the global food crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine. More than half of the grains traded internationally pass through at least one of the 14 bottlenecks (choke points) global maritime: the Suez and Panama canals and the Straits of Malacca, Hormuz and the Bosphorus, among others.
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