As China Boomed, It Didn’t Take Climate Change Into Account. Now It Must.
By Myers, Bradsher & Buckley, 7/26/21, NY Times

China’s breakneck growth over the last 4 decades erected
soaring cities where there had been hamlets & farmland.
The cities lured factories, & the factories lured workers.
The boom lifted hundreds of millions of people out of the
poverty & 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 & 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 & Belgium, & severe
heat & wildfires in Siberia. The flooding in China, which
engulfed subway lines, washed away roads & cut off villages,
also highlights the environmental vulnerabilities that
accompanied the country’s economic boom & could yet
undermine it.

China has always had floods, but as Kong Feng, then a
public policy prof 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 & 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 prof of geology with the U. of Nottingham
in Ningbo in eastern China, said the country’s cities — &
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'd agree to make it more balanced,” said
Chan, who is also a visiting fellow at the Water/Leeds
Research Inst. of the U. of Leeds.

China has already taken some steps to begin to address
climate change. Xi Jinping is the country’s first leader
to make the issue a national priority.

As early as 2013, Xi promised to build an “ecological
civilization” in China. “We must maintain harmony between
man & nature & pursue sustainable development,” he said
in a speech in Geneva in 2013.

The country has nearly quintupled the acreage of green
space in its cities over the past two decades. It intro-
duced a pilot program to create “sponge cities,” including
Zhengzhou, that better absorb rainfall. Last year, Xi
pledged to speed up reductions in emissions & reach carbon
neutrality by 2060. It was a tectonic shift in policy &
may prove to be one in practice, as well.

The question is whether it's too late. Even if countries
like China & the US rapidly cut greenhouse gases, the
warming from those already emitted is likely to have long-
lasting consequences.

Rising sea levels now threaten China’s coastal metro's,
while increasingly severe storms will batter inland cities
that, like Zhengzhou, are sinking under the weight of
development that was hastily planned, with buildings &
infrastructure that were sometimes shoddily constructed.

Even Beijing, which was hit by a deadly flash flood in
2012 that left 79 dead, still does not have the drainage
system needed to siphon away rainfall from a major storm,
despite the capital’s glittering architectural landmarks
signifying China’s rising status.

In Zhengzhou, officials described the torrential rains
that fell last week as a once-in-a-millennium storm that
no amount of planning could have prevented.

Even so, people have asked why the city’s new subway
system flooded, trapping passengers as water steadily rose,
& why a “smart tunnel” under the city’s 3rd ring road
flooded so rapidly that people in cars had little time
to escape.

The worsening impact of climate change could pose a
challenge to the ruling Communist Party, given that
political power in China has long been associated with the
ability to master natural disasters. A public groundswell
several years ago about toxic air pollution in Beijing &
other cities ultimately forced the govt to act.

“As we have more events like what has happened over the
last few days, I do think there'll be more national
realization of the impact of climate change & more
reflection on what we should do about it,” said Li Shuo,
a climate analyst with Greenpeace in China.

China’s urbanization has in some ways made the adjustment
easier. It has relocated millions of people from country-
side villages that had far fewer defenses against recurring
floods. That is why the toll of recent floods has been in
the 100s & 1000s, not in the millions, as some of the worst
disasters in the country’s history were.

The experience of Zhengzhou, though, underscores the
extent of the challenges that lie ahead — & the limits
of easy solutions.

Once a mere crossroads south of a bend in the Yellow River,
the city has expanded exponentially since China’s economic
reforms began over 40 years ago.

Today, skyscrapers & apartment towers stretch into the
distance. The city’s population has doubled since 2001,
reaching 12.6 million.

Zhengzhou floods so frequently that residents joke about
it. “No need to envy those cities where you can view the
sea,” read one online comment that spread during a flood
in 2011, acc. to a report in a local newspaper. “Today we
welcome you to view the sea in Zhengzhou.”

In 2016, the city was one of 16 chosen for a pilot program
to expand green space to mitigate flooding — the “sponge
city” concept.

The idea, not unlike what planners in the US call “low-
impact development,” is to channel water away from dense
urban spaces into parks & lakes, where it can be absorbed
or even recycled.

Yu Kongjian, the dean of the School of Landscape Archi-
tecture at Peking U., is credited with popularizing the
idea in China. He said in a phone interview that in its
rapid development since the 80s, China had turned to
designs from the West that were ill-suited for the extremes
that the country’s climate was already experiencing. Cities
were covered in cement, “colonized,” as he put it, by
“gray infrastructure.”

China, in his view, needs to “revive ancient wisdom &
upgrade it,” setting aside natural spaces for water &
greenery the way ancient farmers once did.

Under the program, Zhengzhou has built over 3,000 miles of
new drainage, eliminated 125 flood-prone areas & created
100s of acres of new green spaces, acc. to an article in
Zhengzhou Daily, a state-owned newspaper.

One such space is Diehu Park, or Butterfly Lake Park,
where weeping willows and camphor trees surround an
artificial lake. It opened only last October. It, too, was
inundated last week.

“Sponges absorb water slowly, not fast,” Dai Chuanying,
a maintenance worker at the park, said on Friday. “If
there’s too much water, the sponge can't absorb all of it.”

Even before this past week’s flooding, some had questioned
the concept. After the city saw flooding in 2019, the China
Youth Daily, a party-run newspaper, lamented that the heavy
spending on the projects had not resulted in significant
improvements.

Others noted that sponge cities were not a panacea. They
were never intended for torrential rain like that in
Zhengzhou on July 20, when 8 inches of rain fell in one hour.

“Although the sponge city initiative is an excellent
sustainable development approach for stormwater management,
it is still debatable whether it can be regarded as the
complete solution to flood risk management in a changing
climate,” said K. Papadikis, dean of the School of Design
at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool U. in Suzhou.

The factories that have driven China’s growth also pumped
out more & more of the gases that contribute to climate
change, while also badly polluting the air. Like countries
everywhere, China now faces the tasks of reducing emissions
& preparing for the effects of global warming that
increasingly seem unavoidable.

Chan, the professor, said that in China the issue of
climate change has not been as politically polarizing as
in, for example, the US. That could make it easier to
build public support for the changes local & national
govts have to make, many of which will be costly.

“I know for cities, the questions of land use are expensive,
but we’re talking about climate change,” he said. “We’re
talking about future development for the next generation
or the next, next generation.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/26/world/asia/china-climate-change.html

"David P." wrote in message
news:20a24995-e994-4966-a2df-365fed13defcn@googlegroups.com...
>
> As China Boomed, It Didn’t Take Climate Change Into Account. Now It Must.
> By Myers, Bradsher & Buckley, 7/26/21, NY Times
>
> China’s breakneck growth over the last 4 decades erected soaring cities
> where there had been hamlets & farmland. The cities lured factories, & the
> factories lured workers. The boom lifted hundreds of millions of people
> out of the poverty & 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.

I'm surprised YT hasn't "pulled" these:

Ecological disasters galore. Nice soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziltTCFffLQ

Effects of pollution on China:
Pt. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4DtOhe2LfQ
Pt. 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d-Ky7Se-v8

Now that he's been forced out of China, Chris Chappell can
speak freely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwOBRH56Ic0

On Friday, July 30, 2021 at 9:39:08 PM UTC-4, David P. wrote:
> As China Boomed, It Didn’t Take Climate Change Into Account. Now It Must.
> By Myers, Bradsher & Buckley, 7/26/21, NY Times
>
> China’s breakneck growth over the last 4 decades erected
> soaring cities where there had been hamlets & farmland.
> The cities lured factories, & the factories lured workers.
> The boom lifted hundreds of millions of people out of the
> poverty & 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 & 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 & Belgium, & severe
> heat & wildfires in Siberia. The flooding in China, which
> engulfed subway lines, washed away roads & cut off villages,
> also highlights the environmental vulnerabilities that
> accompanied the country’s economic boom & could yet
> undermine it.
>
> China has always had floods, but as Kong Feng, then a
> public policy prof 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 & 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 prof of geology with the U. of Nottingham
> in Ningbo in eastern China, said the country’s cities — &
> 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'd agree to make it more balanced,” said
> Chan, who is also a visiting fellow at the Water/Leeds
> Research Inst. of the U. of Leeds.
>
> China has already taken some steps to begin to address
> climate change. Xi Jinping is the country’s first leader
> to make the issue a national priority.
>
> As early as 2013, Xi promised to build an “ecological
> civilization” in China. “We must maintain harmony between
> man & nature & pursue sustainable development,” he said
> in a speech in Geneva in 2013.
>
> The country has nearly quintupled the acreage of green
> space in its cities over the past two decades. It intro-
> duced a pilot program to create “sponge cities,” including
> Zhengzhou, that better absorb rainfall. Last year, Xi
> pledged to speed up reductions in emissions & reach carbon
> neutrality by 2060. It was a tectonic shift in policy &
> may prove to be one in practice, as well.
>
> The question is whether it's too late. Even if countries
> like China & the US rapidly cut greenhouse gases, the
> warming from those already emitted is likely to have long-
> lasting consequences.
>
> Rising sea levels now threaten China’s coastal metro's,
> while increasingly severe storms will batter inland cities
> that, like Zhengzhou, are sinking under the weight of
> development that was hastily planned, with buildings &
> infrastructure that were sometimes shoddily constructed.
>
> Even Beijing, which was hit by a deadly flash flood in
> 2012 that left 79 dead, still does not have the drainage
> system needed to siphon away rainfall from a major storm,
> despite the capital’s glittering architectural landmarks
> signifying China’s rising status.
>
> In Zhengzhou, officials described the torrential rains
> that fell last week as a once-in-a-millennium storm that
> no amount of planning could have prevented.
>
> Even so, people have asked why the city’s new subway
> system flooded, trapping passengers as water steadily rose,
> & why a “smart tunnel” under the city’s 3rd ring road
> flooded so rapidly that people in cars had little time
> to escape.
>
> The worsening impact of climate change could pose a
> challenge to the ruling Communist Party, given that
> political power in China has long been associated with the
> ability to master natural disasters. A public groundswell
> several years ago about toxic air pollution in Beijing &
> other cities ultimately forced the govt to act.
>
> “As we have more events like what has happened over the
> last few days, I do think there'll be more national
> realization of the impact of climate change & more
> reflection on what we should do about it,” said Li Shuo,
> a climate analyst with Greenpeace in China.
>
> China’s urbanization has in some ways made the adjustment
> easier. It has relocated millions of people from country-
> side villages that had far fewer defenses against recurring
> floods. That is why the toll of recent floods has been in
> the 100s & 1000s, not in the millions, as some of the worst
> disasters in the country’s history were.
>
> The experience of Zhengzhou, though, underscores the
> extent of the challenges that lie ahead — & the limits
> of easy solutions.
>
> Once a mere crossroads south of a bend in the Yellow River,
> the city has expanded exponentially since China’s economic
> reforms began over 40 years ago.
>
> Today, skyscrapers & apartment towers stretch into the
> distance. The city’s population has doubled since 2001,
> reaching 12.6 million.
>
> Zhengzhou floods so frequently that residents joke about
> it. “No need to envy those cities where you can view the
> sea,” read one online comment that spread during a flood
> in 2011, acc. to a report in a local newspaper. “Today we
> welcome you to view the sea in Zhengzhou.”
>
> In 2016, the city was one of 16 chosen for a pilot program
> to expand green space to mitigate flooding — the “sponge
> city” concept.
>
> The idea, not unlike what planners in the US call “low-
> impact development,” is to channel water away from dense
> urban spaces into parks & lakes, where it can be absorbed
> or even recycled.
>
> Yu Kongjian, the dean of the School of Landscape Archi-
> tecture at Peking U., is credited with popularizing the
> idea in China. He said in a phone interview that in its
> rapid development since the 80s, China had turned to
> designs from the West that were ill-suited for the extremes
> that the country’s climate was already experiencing. Cities
> were covered in cement, “colonized,” as he put it, by
> “gray infrastructure.”
>
> China, in his view, needs to “revive ancient wisdom &
> upgrade it,” setting aside natural spaces for water &
> greenery the way ancient farmers once did.
>
> Under the program, Zhengzhou has built over 3,000 miles of
> new drainage, eliminated 125 flood-prone areas & created
> 100s of acres of new green spaces, acc. to an article in
> Zhengzhou Daily, a state-owned newspaper.
>
> One such space is Diehu Park, or Butterfly Lake Park,
> where weeping willows and camphor trees surround an
> artificial lake. It opened only last October. It, too, was
> inundated last week.
>
> “Sponges absorb water slowly, not fast,” Dai Chuanying,
> a maintenance worker at the park, said on Friday. “If
> there’s too much water, the sponge can't absorb all of it.”
>
> Even before this past week’s flooding, some had questioned
> the concept. After the city saw flooding in 2019, the China
> Youth Daily, a party-run newspaper, lamented that the heavy
> spending on the projects had not resulted in significant
> improvements.
>
> Others noted that sponge cities were not a panacea. They
> were never intended for torrential rain like that in
> Zhengzhou on July 20, when 8 inches of rain fell in one hour.
>
> “Although the sponge city initiative is an excellent
> sustainable development approach for stormwater management,
> it is still debatable whether it can be regarded as the
> complete solution to flood risk management in a changing
> climate,” said K. Papadikis, dean of the School of Design
> at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool U. in Suzhou.
>
> The factories that have driven China’s growth also pumped
> out more & more of the gases that contribute to climate
> change, while also badly polluting the air. Like countries
> everywhere, China now faces the tasks of reducing emissions
> & preparing for the effects of global warming that
> increasingly seem unavoidable.
>
> Chan, the professor, said that in China the issue of
> climate change has not been as politically polarizing as
> in, for example, the US. That could make it easier to
> build public support for the changes local & national
> govts have to make, many of which will be costly.
>
> “I know for cities, the questions of land use are expensive,
> but we’re talking about climate change,” he said. “We’re
> talking about future development for the next generation
> or the next, next generation.”
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/26/world/asia/china-climate-change.html

ltlee1 wrote:
> David P. wrote:
> > As China Boomed, It Didn’t Take Climate Change Into Account. Now It Must.
> > By Myers, Bradsher & Buckley, 7/26/21, NY Times
> > [ . . . ]
> >
> > https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/26/world/asia/china-climate-change.html
> A long article for nothing.
> At present, US is still producing most greenhouse gas on a per capita basis.
-----------------
The Worldbank’s most recent data from 2014 shows the top emitters of CO2
in millions of kilotons (kt) added to the atmosphere.
China: 10.3m kt
United States: 5.3m kt
India: 2.2m kt
Russia: 1.7m kt
Japan: 1.2m kt
Germany: 0.7m kt
Iran: 0.65m kt
Saudi Arabia: 0.6m kt
South Korea: 0.59m kt
Canada: 0.54m kt
https://healthyhumanlife.com/blogs/news/top-polluting-countries
--
--
------
-

"David P." wrote in message
news:15520cec-5607-4250-b0cb-460b4ad4f77an@googlegroups.com...
>
> The Worldbank’s most recent data from 2014 shows the top emitters of CO2
> in millions of kilotons (kt) added to the atmosphere.
> China: 10.3m kt
> United States: 5.3m kt

Don't forget Mother Nature's contributions:

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/doesnt-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-come-natural-sources

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/26/us/yellowstone-park-emits-tons-of-carbon-dioxide-study-finds.html

On Friday, August 6, 2021 at 3:06:07 PM UTC-4, Byker wrote:
> "David P." wrote in message
> news:15520cec-5607-4250...@googlegroups.com...
> >
> > The Worldbank’s most recent data from 2014 shows the top emitters of CO2
> > in millions of kilotons (kt) added to the atmosphere.
> > China: 10.3m kt
> > United States: 5.3m kt

Thank you for proving my point.
Chinese produce less CO2 than Americans, about half as much per capita although China makes and exports a lot
of manufacturing good all over the world.

> Don't forget Mother Nature's contributions:
>
> https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/doesnt-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-come-natural-sources
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/26/us/yellowstone-park-emits-tons-of-carbon-dioxide-study-finds.html