NY Times, Dec. 9 2015 Smog So Thick, Beijing Comes to a Standstill By EDWARD WONG
BEIJING — Residents across this city awoke to an environmental state of emergency on Tuesday as poisonous air quality prompted the government to close schools, force motorists off the road and shut down factories. The government, which for the first time declared a “red alert” over air pollution late Monday, even broadcast what sounded like bombing raid alerts in the subways — warnings telling people to take precautions with their health. Yet even with those extraordinary measures, the toxic air grew worse, shrouding this capital city of more than 20 million in a soupy, metallic haze. By 4 p.m., walking the dim streets was like strolling through a coal mine. The municipal air quality index read 308, rated “hazardous” by United States standards — a level at which people should not set foot outdoors. Because of industrial coal burning, Chinese cities regularly have air of that quality, among the world’s worst. For many residents, the red alert — used for the first time since an emergency plan for pollution was unveiled two years ago — underscored the devil’s handshake that China has made in recent years: the trading of a healthy living environment for breakneck economic growth. Now, as Communist Party leaders try to transform this dystopian scenario, many Chinese are realizing lasting change could take years, maybe decades. Beijing officials issued the alert on Monday night to stem the smog and to show residents that the government was taking action. But the inconvenience it caused for most residents also seared the scope of China’s environmental crisis into the public’s consciousness, just as recent bouts of severe, multiday pollution — the dreaded rounds of “airpocalypse” — have done. “I have to watch my child because there is no kindergarten today,” said Kan Tingting, 35, a manager of a cafe who stayed indoors with her 3-year-old daughter — one of some two million schoolchildren to remain at home Tuesday. “What bothers me the most is that my child may have a very negative view of nature. She loves nature much less than he would in a normal environment. I don’t want her to grow up thinking nature is ugly.” In another corner of Beijing, a university lecturer, Wang Bei, was bunkered down at home with her 10-year-old son. “Air pollution is a huge problem that we ignored early on, while we concentrated on economic development,” she said. “Now we are paying the price for that. It only takes a second for someone to fall gravely ill, but it takes a long time to recover. Now China is that ill person trying to recover from air pollution.” The current spell of bad air began Sunday. By Monday morning, the quality had deteriorated to what the United States labels a “very unhealthy” level. Still, it was not nearly as bad as the toxic cloud that afflicted the city in the final weekend of November, when the concentration of fine, deadly particulate matter in southern Beijing hit 40 times the exposure limit recommended by the World Health Organization. That was the worst stretch of pollution this year, and municipal officials were roundly criticized for declaring only an orange alert — under which people are asked to minimize outdoor activities — rather than going to code red. The sudden announcement Monday night appeared to be an attempt by officials to make up for the oversight. On Tuesday, the Beijing government’s official online news portal reported that the mayor, Wang Anshun, said the government must win the understanding and support of the people so both can work together to fight smog. The report said the mayor checked construction sites; inspected a government building’s parking lot to ensure 30 percent of official cars were not in use, as required by the red alert; and visited traffic police checkpoints. A similar use of broad traffic restrictions in late 2014 resulted in 1.7 million cars being kept off the roads daily, the Beijing government said. Some international organizations applauded the decision to issue the alert, which is supposed to be done every time there is a prediction of heavy pollution for more than three days. “The issuing of a ‘red’ pollution alert means, first and foremost, that the Beijing authorities are taking air quality, and related health issues, very seriously,” Dr. Bernhard Schwartländer, the representative of the World Health Organization in China, said in a written statement. The group helped lead a 2010 study whose data showed outdoor air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, nearly 40 percent of the global total. Greenpeace East Asia also praised Beijing, after criticizing it a week earlier for inaction. “The red alert is a welcome sign of a different attitude from the Beijing government,” said Dong Liansai, a climate and energy campaigner. “However, this, the latest of a series of airpocalypses to hit Beijing, is also a firm reminder of just how much more needs to be done to ensure safe air for all.” At the climate talks in Paris, Chinese officials are discussing their government’s plans to tamp down coal use. Many residents said on Tuesday that the issuing of the alert in the middle of those talks, and the astronomical air pollution levels in late November, should signal added urgency to those officials. Monday’s announcement took most residents by surprise. Parents had to check with chat groups on their WeChat phone apps to see if schools were indeed shutting down. On Tuesday, Beijing’s more than 3,200 schools generally obeyed the orders to close. But by the afternoon, at least two international schools told parents they planned to reopen on Wednesday, even though city officials had imposed the red alert until noon on Thursday. Some workers said they would have no option but to drive daily to the office, in defiance of the regulation aimed at limiting car use to every other day. “There is no other way for me to go to work besides driving,” said Zhao Lin, 36, a technology salesman. “I have to drive for more than an hour each way to commute to work every day.” “I’m not supposed to drive tomorrow because my car has an even number license plate, but I have to,” he said. “They can fine me or dock me points. I have no choice. I think they can’t see my license plate in this smog, anyway.” Since 2013, when an intense round of pollution hit northern China in January, Beijing has had a color-coded emergency response plan to smog. That plan was strengthened with new measures this March. Despite all that, Beijing had never sounded a red alert, and residents wondered why. Did city officials or the top Communist Party leaders worry they would lose face? Did they fear the economic losses that might result? “They probably didn’t declare a red alert last week because they didn’t want to slow down the economy,” said Ms. Wang, the university lecturer. “Shutting down factories is not ideal for the economy, but health should come first.” Ms. Wang said she regularly checked a phone app to monitor air quality, and she and her son wore masks outdoors and turned on purifiers at home. But she said she was worried about the invisible effects on her son’s health. Ms. Kan, the cafe manager, said she and her daughter were staying in Beijing, but “if not for my work, I’d move away in a heartbeat.” She added: “I used to live in Australia, so I could move there. Or anywhere in southern China is better than the north.” On one street in the city center, a young salesman, Liu Jia, sat on a bench, puffing away on a cigarette. Half the pedestrians around him were wearing masks. “I can choose to smoke a cigarette,” he said, then looked up. “But there’s no choice in this.” Above him, the sky was the color of ash. Chris Buckley contributed reporting, and Mia Li contributed research. --- NY Times, Dec. 9 2015 Chinese Glacier’s Retreat Signals Trouble for Asian Water Supply By EDWARD WONG MENGKE GLACIER, China — Over the years, Qin Xiang and his fellow scientists at a high and lonely research station in the Qilian Mountains of northwest China have tracked the inexorable effects of rising temperatures on one of China’s most important water sources. “The thing most sensitive to climate change is a glacier,” said Dr. Qin, 42, as he slowly trod across an icy field of the Mengke Glacier, one of the country’s largest. “In the 1970s, people thought glaciers were permanent. They didn’t think that glaciers would recede. They thought this glacier would endure. But then the climate began changing, and temperatures climbed.” Beneath Dr. Qin’s feet, the cracking ice signaled the second-by-second shifting of the glacier. The extreme effects predicted of global climate change are already happening in western China. Glacier retreat here and across the so-called Third Pole, the glaciers of the Himalayas and related mountain ranges, threatens Asia’s water supply. Towns and villages along the arid Hexi Corridor, a passage on the historic Silk Road where camels still roam, have suffered floods and landslides caused by sudden summer rainstorms. Permafrost is disappearing from the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau, jeopardizing the existence of plants and animals, the livelihoods of its people and even the integrity of infrastructure like China’s high-altitude railway to Lhasa, Tibet. The fact that Chinese scientists are raising alarms about these changes is a key reason that the Chinese government has been engaging fully in climate change negotiations in recent years. Another is the deadly urban air pollution, caused mostly by industrial coal burning, that resulted in Beijing’s first red alert over air quality on Monday. China, which remains the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gas, pledged last year to begin lowering carbon dioxide emissions around 2030, and in Paris this month, President Xi Jinping reiterated his resolve to help slow climate change. There are no vocal climate change deniers among top Chinese officials. In November, China released a detailed scientific report on climate change that predicted disastrous consequences for its 1.4 billion people. Those included rising sea levels along the urbanized coast, floods from storms across China and the erosion of glaciers. More than 80 percent of the permafrost on the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau could disappear by the next century, the report said. Temperatures in China are expected to rise by 1.3 to 5 degrees Celsius, or 2.3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit, by the end of the century, and temperatures have risen faster in China in the last half-century than the global average. People across China are already feeling the impact. The most obvious devastation comes from flooding. The report said an increase in urban floods attributed to climate change has destroyed homes and infrastructure. From 2008 to 2010, 62 percent of Chinese cities had floods; 173 had three or more. “China is more prone to the adverse effects of climate change because China is vast, has diverse types of ecology and has relatively fragile natural conditions,” Du Xiangwan, chairman of the National Expert Committee on Climate Change, wrote in the report’s introduction. Last weekend, Chinese scientists released a separate report that said the surface area of glaciers on Mount Everest, which straddles the Tibet-Nepal border, have shrunk nearly 30 percent in the last 40 years. Vanishing glaciers raise urgent concerns beyond Tibet and China. By one estimate, the 46,000 glaciers of the Third Pole region help sustain 1.5 billion people in 10 countries — its waters flowing to places as distant as the tropical Mekong Delta of Vietnam, the hills of eastern Myanmar and the southern plains of Bangladesh. Scattered across nearly two million square miles, these glaciers are receding at an ever-quickening pace, producing a rise in levels of rivers and lakes in the short term and threatening Asia’s water supply in the long run. A paper published this year by The Journal of Glaciology said the retreat of Asian glaciers was emblematic of a “historically unprecedented global glacier decline.” “I would say that climatologically, we are in unfamiliar territory, and the world’s ice cover is responding dramatically,” said Lonnie G. Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University who helped found a project to study climate change on the Tibetan Plateau. Across China, the surface area of glaciers has decreased more than 10 percent since the 1960s, according to the climate change report. The report linked the expected water scarcity to national security, noting that “in the future, disputes between China and neighboring countries on regional environmental resources will keep growing.” The Qilian range, on the north end of the Tibetan Plateau, straddles three provinces and towers to 18,200 feet. Scientists here at the Mengke Glacier have been studying it from a permanent research station since 2007, one of about 10 major glacier research stations in China. The glacier is six miles long and covers nearly eight square miles. As it recedes more rapidly, floods here have become more frequent and more powerful. In July, the road to the research station flooded, with water rising more than six feet. Zhao Shangxue, who manages logistics here, said that he had had to abandon his car and walk four hours to the station. “The glacier has always melted in the summertime, but now it melts even more,” he said. A report by the research center said the retreat of the Mengke Glacier and two others in the Qilian range accelerated gradually in the 1990s, then tripled their speed in the 2000s. In the last decade, the glaciers have been disappearing at a faster rate than at any time since 1960. From 2005 to 2014, the Mengke Glacier retreated an average of 54 feet a year, while from 1993 to 2005, it retreated 26 feet a year. As scientists like Mr. Qin study the glacier and the consequences of its retreat, towns and villages in the region are grappling with a worsening cycle of drought, sudden rainstorms and floods. The town closest to the glacier, Shibaocheng, has been devastated by recent storms. Its 1,250 residents, mostly ethnic Mongolian, graze yaks, horses and sheep in high pastures below the glacier during the summer. In 2012, a sudden rainstorm set off flooding that destroyed about 200 homes. Nearly 14,000 animals were killed or lost. “Old people here say they hadn’t seen such a flood in 50 or 60 years,” said Gu Wei, the deputy mayor. She said rain mixed with hail came down for three days. Scientists have no easy way to determine the exact relationship between the rainfall and the changes in the nearby glacier, Dr. Qin said. “The retreat of glaciers of course has an effect on the climate and on rain patterns, but we can’t measure it,” he said. Southeast of Mengke Glacier, 180 miles away along the Hexi Corridor, Sunan County at the foot of the Qilian Mountains has experienced some of the region’s worst flooding. It is home to ethnic Yugurs and has flooded a half-dozen times since 2006. Five years ago, at least 11 people died in floods and landslides. In July, heavy rains led to similar disasters in 13 villages, destroying more than 150 homes and causing more than $6 million of damage, an official report said. “Floods in the Hexi Corridor are related to torrential rains and precipitation from fronts,” said Wang Ninglian, a glaciologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “It’s caused by climate change.” Kiki Zhao and Mia Li contributed research. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
