change—an urgent problem, to be sure, but one whose worst effects
still lie in the future—while downplaying how coal burning is assault-
ing the health of people todayin these countries. And the death toll is
significant: Approximately two out of every seven deaths in China,
according to World Bank figures, are attributable to the nation’s
unspeakable air and water pollution.
But climate change is likely to be a killer, too, and its onset appears
inevitable. China’s people and rulers are unlikely to be swayed from
the path of rapid economic development and increased greenhouse gas
emissions, even though China may already be suffering early conse-
quences of global climate change, with yet more punishing effects
likely in the years to come. In 1998, for example, floods roared through
the Yangtze and Songhua River Valleys, leaving an estimated fifty-six
million people homeless. Between 1999 and 2001, much of China
experienced a record drought that reduced the grain harvest by 10 per-
cent—an ominous development in a country that is already straining
to feed itself and where some three hundred cities suffer from severe
water shortages.
A study done by China’s National Environmental Protection
Agency, the World Bank, and the United Nations Development
Programme concluded that a doubling of global carbon dioxide con-
centrations would have the following impacts on China: Storms and
typhoons would become more extreme and frequent; much of China’s
coastline, including the economic powerhouses of Shanghai and
Guangdong Province, would face severe flooding—with an area the
size of Portugal inundated and an estimated sixty-seven million people
displaced; food production would be affected most significantly of all,
with increased drought and soil erosion lowering average yields of
wheat, rice, and cotton; livestock and fish production would also
decline.
These projections must be weighed against a second essential fact:
In poor countries, common people and government officials alike see
fossil fuel use as their ticket out of poverty. If I heard it once in China, I
heard it fifty times: “We are used to it.” That is what locals would answer
when I asked whether the pollution bothered them. It took me a while to
figure out exactly what they meant. They were not stupid; they did not
China 15