by Moisha Blechman
The Chinese government seems to have caught most of us off-guard when it recently announced it is “poorly prepared to tackle the impact of climate change that presents a serious threat to the country, thanks to a lack of planning and public awareness.”
What this means is that China is ahead of the United States. I have yet to see an announcement like this from Washington. At least the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission, China’s powerful economic planning agency, is officially admitting to the public that “climate change is a serious threat to food, water, ecological and energy security, and people’s lives and property.”
They are admitting that “in the future there will be even more unfavorable impacts” and, if “effective measures are not taken, the losses from extreme weather will be even more serious.”
In sum, China, at the national government level, is officially acknowledging that climate change exists, that the impact is already serious and getting worse, and that the nation is poorly prepared to cope. China is already experiencing a decline in available fresh water, along with the ability to grow food, while rising sea levels threaten to inundate major cities.
But what do we have in the United States? A Congress that hates to admit climate change, so there is no national policy of preparation.
The Chinese Commission is proposing to meet the challenge with more reservoirs, better protection for forests and wetlands, and weather-warning systems, but it is not optimistic. That part is correct. The idea that these “effective measures” are sufficient to prepare for future impacts is not.
The commission did not mention the need to reduce emissions, and it did not mention the source of the problem, burning coal. The news release does not suggest that the commission compared the present level of pollution and its consequences with the Chinese plan to increase coal burning well into the next decade, and what that may mean for climate change in China and the entire planet.
The United States government is a partner in the plan to increase and continue the use of coal. It permits mining and shipping American coal from Virginia and Montana to China. With pressure from the shipping corporations, especially one controlled by Warren Buffett, the United States is considering a huge new port for the ever-increasing tonnage of coal it will export in the coming years.
Given the desire on the part of China to prepare for climate change impacts, what realistic measures could the Chinese take that actually would be effective?
The first place to find out is to go to www.CO2Now.org. The question to ask is, How many more CO2 emissions can safely be sent heavenward? How much more carbon can safely be dumped into the ocean?
Last May, we hit 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. This has never happened before in human history. In fact, the last time it happened was in the Pliocene epoch.
That was about 4.5 million years ago, and the atmospheric heat trapping capacity was as it is now. At that time the average temperatures were 5 to 7 degrees F. greater than today. Sea levels ranged between 16 to 131 feet higher. The normal movement of water that replenishes nutrients and oxygen ceased and fisheries collapsed. The period saw the extinction of many huge, archaic mammals.
The Earth learned and, after millions of years, animal life recovered, but with much smaller animals.
For man, besides increasing catastrophic storms and droughts, there is the huge problem of thermal limits. People have a thermal limit. The heat we create just to digest food will not leave the body if the outdoor temperature is too high. As it approaches 98.6 people become uncomfortable and at a certain point they start to die. This is true for every living plant and animal. It is especially true for the large mammals, such as cows, who generate much more heat through their metabolism.
Adaptation for the future would be to quickly breed much smaller cows if we want meat and milk. What about us? Maybe we have to become much smaller if we want to survive. This is preparation for the future.
No government— Chinese, American, or other—is talking about “the sixth extinction,” the biodiversity crisis we are experiencing. Every plant and animal is struggling to adapt to the new climate that humanity has created.
The living world is under stress to survive and many are not making it. We know we are dependent on it, but we are not imagining what it will be like to watch it all die. Ultimately, it is temperature that decides our future, and it is how many parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere that will decide the temperature. That figure is the core problem. It is the only thing to think about when the subject is adaptation and preparation.
This is why the news from China is contradictory. There are many ways to prepare and adapt in the short run. One would be to not only halt all logging everywhere, but to plant billions of trees. Another would be to reduce human population by making family planning available to all.
But the crucial point is to immediately target emissions and go to zero. Adaptation really means this: learning how to live when we keep coal and oil in the ground, where nature put it.
Moisha Blechman chairs the Chapter’s publications committee as well as the global warming coordinating committee.