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In China, where greenhouse gas emissions are quickly catching up with those of the United States, people are already starting to feel the effects of a changing climate. Chinese coastlines experienced some of the worst typhoons and floods on record this summer, while the western provinces suffered severe drought. Between January and September, natural disasters forced the evacuation and relocation of 13.2 million people and killed more than 2,300, causing direct economic losses of US$24 billion. According to recent estimates by Qin Dahe, director of the China Meteorological Administration, extreme weather now hampers China’s economic growth by between 3 to 6 percent of GDP, or US$70–130 billion, per year.
Residents of China’s rural west are observing the impacts of warming in their daily lives. In the region of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain outside Lijiang, Yunnan province, many locals lament the changes of recent decades. Xie Qiong, a 31-year-old taxi driver and Lijiang native, remembers the cold-weather clothing of her childhood. “When I was a little girl I used to wear extremely thick sweaters in winter. My arms and legs could hardly bend in them. Now, at the coldest time of year, I’m just wearing a thin windbreaker, and it’s enough.” She also points to the changing landscape. “In the past, Snow Mountain would be completely white year-round, and all of the lakes in the area would freeze over. Now there’s hardly any snow on it, even in the middle of winter, and we can fish in the lakes year-round. It snowed once two years ago but hasn’t snowed since.” Gou Xunming of the Lijiang Development and Reform Commission similarly recalls the frigid winters of his youth. “When I was a student here in 1982 I used to have cold blisters all over my fingers by this time of year. Now you can just walk around with a thin shirt on.”
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Others worry about the resource issues that have arisen in the hotter, dryer climate. “When I was little, the water in the old town flowed abundantly,” remembers Xie Qiong. “We used it for everything—washing, cooking, drinking, playing. But now there is so little that we can only look at it, and pretty soon that may be gone too.” According to scientists, loss of glacial water is one of the most pressing concerns posed by climate change in China, where 23 percent of the population depends on glacial water.
The Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has estimated that China will lose two-thirds of its glaciers by 2050, putting at least 300 million people at risk. In just the past 20 years, Lijiang’s Snow Mountain glacier has receded by 250 meters.
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For many residents, making sense of the causes of and solutions to climate change is not always as easy as describing the warming itself. Mr. Xu looks to population growth for the roots of climate change. “Global warming is like a room with too many people. It gets hot and stuffy and we can’t breathe. Now there are more and more people, and we can’t just open a window, so the atmosphere gets warmer and warmer.” On the other hand, Gou Xunming argues that climate change is the result of “natural changes” in the atmosphere. “There are not very many people in Lijiang, but the climate is still warming here too. So how can we say that it is human-caused? The atmosphere would be getting warmer naturally, even without humans.” But Xie Qiong sees climate change in the larger context of misguided human development. “We are ruining ecosystems everywhere. Climate change is just another example of the poor environmental protection ethic of humans.
They are always saying that development is going to make our lives better. We will be modern and rich. But in reality, our quality of life is getting worse.”
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http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4800
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