China should face, publicize and emphasize connection between climate crisis and natural disasters

  Chinese officials and all sectors should face, publicize and emphasize the connection between the climate crisis and natural disasters in China in recent years

   Since late May this year, many places in China have experienced very serious floods and droughts. For example, in Henan Province, there have been dozens of days of drought and high temperatures that have cracked the land and sanded the soil; in Northeast China, East China, and South China, there have been severe floods, especially in Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Anhui, and Hunan, which have affected tens of millions of people, flooded millions of homes, and killed at least hundreds of people (and the number of deaths will rise dramatically as the flooding continues and as rescues and salvage operations are carried out). (Rising). In the southwest of China, Sichuan and Chongqing have also been experiencing high temperatures ranging from 40°-43°, making the heat unbearable. In April, heavy rainfall and flooding occurred in many parts of China, with the amount of rainfall and the extent of the disaster exceeding the same period in previous years.

   These disasters have caused tremendous damage and destruction to the lives and health of Chinese citizens, agricultural production, and economic development, and the disruption to people's daily lives has become increasingly serious and long-lasting. Not only does the disaster itself need to be highly emphasized and the government need to actively respond to it, but the common and root causes of this series of disasters need to be uncovered and publicized.

   Comprehensive analysis of many information, the recent floods, droughts and hot weather in China is not just the practice and accident of natural disasters that have occurred on the earth in the past ten million years, but it is also a disaster catalyzed and intensified by the climate crisis, which is a concrete manifestation of the change of the ecological environment due to global warming.

   If it were only by convention and chance, China and the world in recent years would not have experienced such extreme weather conditions as repeated record-breaking high temperatures and heat waves, rare levels of precipitation and flooding over hundreds of years, droughts that have lasted for too long, and extreme droughts and flooding that have occurred in many places in turn.

   For example, in 2021 in Zhengzhou City, Henan Province, heavy rainfall triggered urban flooding that killed nearly 400 people, including water ingress and deaths in subway lines. In 2021-2023, a number of deaths from heat-related "pyrexia" were diagnosed in southern China, and in 2023, northeast China was hit by massive floods, inundating neighborhoods that had never been flooded before and killing those who were unable to evacuate in time. This year, record high temperatures, droughts, and floods have occurred again in many parts of China.

  In these disasters, agricultural water conservancy facilities and urban drainage systems that could have prevented "once-in-a-century" or even "once-in-a-thousand-year" droughts and floods have generally been overloaded, collapsed, and unable to contain the disaster, and many areas that have not experienced floods have suddenly been affected, all of which illustrate the seriousness of the disaster and the fact that it has escaped the norm. The severity of the disasters, escaping the norm, is different from the old days.

  And according to the research and certification of authoritative organizations such as the United Nations, WHO, the European Union, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and many colleges and research institutes around the world (including Tsinghua and Beihua Universities in China and Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Engineering, etc.), in recent years, whether it is the heat waves that have occurred in Europe and Africa, the floods in South and South-East Asia, or a series of floods and droughts in China, it is all directly and closely related to the global climate's rapid warming, natural environment These disasters are directly and closely related to the rapid warming of the global climate and the drastic changes and deterioration of the natural environment due to human factors. In short, these disasters are all induced or exacerbated by the global climate crisis. Without the climate crisis, some of these disasters would not have occurred at all, and even if they had occurred, the extent of the disasters and the damage caused would have been much smaller than they are now.

    Since global warming and climate crisis are the key to the occurrence of these disasters, facing up to, preventing and solving the climate crisis is of course the necessary attitude and path to avoid or weaken the related natural disasters. And many countries in Europe, America, Southeast Asia and Africa have indeed made the prevention and control of the climate crisis an open policy and have continuously publicized the climate issue to their nationals and the world in an attempt to avoid the further deterioration of the climate crisis and to save the Earth as well as the lives and livelihoods of human beings.

   What is puzzling and worrisome, however, is that even as the impacts of the climate crisis have become increasingly obvious and severe, Chinese officials have been very low-key about climate change as a whole, and have almost never been willing to link recent years' heat and drought disasters to the issue of climate change (even if such a linkage could even lessen the government's responsibility for poor disaster relief in specific disasters).

  China's official media, major self-publishing media platforms, and "V" personalities have largely avoided the connection between these disasters and the climate crisis. Although some media outlets, such as CNN, do mention climate change in their interviews with people from meteorological agencies, they are often placed on obscure pages and locations and are not emphasized and prominently displayed. In most cases, these disasters are still attributed to "subtropical high pressure", "typhoons", "air currents", etc., avoiding the background of global warming and climate change.

    In addition, although the issue of climate crisis has been frequently emphasized and publicized around the world, including many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, China has long held a low-key and evasive attitude towards the climate issue. While China's leaders have made a commitment at the UN General Assembly in 2020 to become "carbon neutral" by 2060, which has been reiterated several times since then; China has also spoken of its commitment to combating the climate crisis during summit talks with the US, EU, Australia and other countries and regions; and China has made considerable efforts to develop a new energy industry. Quite a bit of effort has gone into this.

   On the whole, however, China still avoids the climate issue, and in particular the negative impacts of the climate crisis on humanity and the connection between various disasters and the climate issue have apparently been greatly downplayed. Chinese universities and research institutes also have a lot of research results and data on climate issues, but they are not open to the public and are only discussed in a low-key manner in professional circles. Even though some Chinese official reports and Chinese media occasionally mention climate issues, they are very limited and do not match the seriousness of the climate issue, nor do they match the extent of the impact of the climate crisis on China as a world power with one-sixth of the world's population and the degree of attention it should pay to the issue. In addition, China's continued heavy use of coal, oil and gas, and other energy sources that produce large amounts of carbon dioxide and exacerbate the climate crisis, casts doubt on the reliability of its commitment to "carbon neutrality".

   The author has some specific speculations about the motives of China's official practice of avoiding and downplaying the climate crisis. However, this is too complicated to discuss, so I will not mention it in this paper for the time being. Here the author will only talk about the drawbacks of this practice and his personal suggestions.

   In the author's opinion, in view of the fact that the climate crisis has induced and exacerbated many natural disasters in China and the world, and that in recent years China's high temperatures and droughts have significantly exceeded the previous thresholds, resulting in a large number of deaths, China's official authorities (be it the party and government institutions, the official media, and other official-influenced organizations and institutions) should face up to the consequences of the disaster brought about by the climate crisis, and inform the general public of the linkage between various natural disasters of recent years and global climate change, and take all necessary measures. China will continue to emphasize the linkages between climate change and climate change and take all necessary measures to curb the exacerbation of the climate crisis.

   If China still avoids paying attention to and mentioning the role of climate issues in promoting natural disasters, and only aims at preventing and rescuing specific disaster events, and still responds according to the way it did before the global climate worsened dramatically, then it is bound to be treating the symptoms but not the root cause, "pressing the gourd and starting the dipper", "seeking the sword by carving the boat", and disasters will become more and more frequent. "In the future, the number of disasters will be increasing, exceeding the experience and routine of the old days of disaster prevention, and there will be all kinds of rare and even unprecedented disasters, resulting in more casualties, more economic losses and destruction of social order, more irreversible deterioration of the natural environment and humanistic environment, and jeopardizing the survival of all Chinese people, and damaging the daily life of every Chinese person.

    Whatever the motivation of the Chinese officials, the avoidance of the truth and the seriousness of the climate issue is inappropriate and should be changed as soon as possible. People's lives are vital, and the country's development requires a safe natural and human environment. The damage caused by the climate crisis and related heat and drought disasters in China has become more and more visible and widespread; traditional disaster relief concepts and preconceptions about the type and extent of disasters are also significantly outdated under the changing climate "new normal," and many lives that could have been saved have been lost in disasters.2021 Zhengzhou floods are the most prominent example of this. Examples.

  This year's droughts in Henan and floods in Anhui and Guangdong also exceeded expectations and resulted in many avoidable deaths and damages, and the June 23-24 inundation of the Changsha train station and nearby subway station in Hunan province is yet another example of a disaster that exceeded the capacity of traditional flood control facilities. And as China enters the summer, rain and high temperatures will become more and more frequent and persistent rain and prolonged droughts will alternate between different regions at the same time/at different times in the same region, and the subsequent floods, droughts, high-temperature pyroclastic diseases, and the resulting deaths and economic losses will likely be more severe than in May/June.

   Therefore, Chinese officials should make it clear that the climate crisis is the root cause of the various disasters that have occurred or intensified in China in recent years, and inform the public clearly and widely by all means. This is a crucial matter. This is not just a technical issue, but the way forward for China's future disaster prevention and mitigation, and for the survival of the nation.

   Facing up to the source and characteristics of disasters and informing the public openly and honestly is the first step in reversing the ineffectiveness of disaster relief. Only after that can they find the right direction and make concerted efforts to fight against droughts, floods, high temperatures and other disasters and extreme weather, and to defend the safety and health of the people. If the direction is not clear, the root cause of the disaster is misjudged and intentionally ambiguous, disaster relief is bound to be ineffective, resulting in half the result with twice the effort in the less severe cases, and in the more severe cases, the occurrence of more unpredictable and unresistable catastrophes.

   Moreover, the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China, and other laws clearly stipulate that the people have the right to know and be informed of important decisions of the state, as well as important matters of public interest that occur in society. Chinese citizens should have the right to know about major issues of national and personal interest such as the climate crisis. With the frequent occurrence of climate change-related disasters in recent years, which have affected hundreds of millions of people and killed tens of thousands, people certainly have the right to know what is happening and how to prevent it. By concealing and downplaying the facts, those in power are infringing on the people's right to know, and it is an illegal and unconstitutional act that violates the Constitution and the Civil Code, and it needs to be stopped and corrected in a timely manner.

  Of course, it is not only the responsibility of Chinese officials to focus on and be transparent about climate issues, but also every Chinese citizen should pay attention to the root causes of climate change behind disasters and prepare for rainy days, especially the elites from all walks of life and the media "V" should break their silence on climate issues and publicize the ins and outs of global warming and the climate crisis and its hazards, not only for self-protection, but also for the sake of our fellow countrymen. For self-protection, it is also the duty of compatriots to help each other. Chinese officials and citizens should communicate and collaborate more with other countries around the world, especially those where similar disasters occur frequently, and exchange lessons learned, in order to fight climate disasters that require the solidarity of all mankind, and to safeguard the Earth and our tomorrow.