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Chinese authorities restart 15 closed coal mines despite
president’s pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060
Last week they decided to open 38 more coal mines in Inner Mongolia
5 Aug, 2021 17:05
FILE PHOTO. A coal-burning power plant can be seen behind a factory in the city of Baotou, in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. © Reuters / David Gray
China’s National Development and Reform Commission has announced that 15 closed coal mines will restart production amid surging demand for power, despite President Xi Jinping’s pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2060.
The decision, announced in a statement on Wednesday, said 15 previously closed mines will be reopened, distributing more than 10 million tonnes of coal from its reserves to ensure the country can meet the power demand during the peak summer season.
Restarting production at the 15 mines in northern China follows a similar decision last week to reopen a further 38 mines in Inner Mongolia, with the total number of mines back in production having a combined annual production capacity of more than 110 million tonnes.
With China responsible for emitting a third of the world’s greenhouse gases, the decision to restart production at the coal plants comes despite a pledge by President Xi Jinping in September 2020 to make the country carbon neutral by 2060.
China is not the only country eyeing an increased reliance on coal; the Chinese mine reopenings come amid an ongoing discussion in Australia over the approval of an extension of the Vickery coal mine. The final sign-off on the expansion has been delayed pending a court challenge that claims the move would be in violation of Canberra’s pledge to tackle the harmful impact of climate change.
Australia is currently the world’s largest coal exporter and has, so far, refused to agree to meeting a zero emissions target by 2050. It currently ranks last out of 193 United Nations members for action taken to combat greenhouse gas emissions.
I can't help but think that if Canada reduced their carbon footprint to zero for the next 100 years, that it wouldn't make up for China's increase in next year alone.
Environmentalists in Canada are very busy trying to prevent the country from producing and exporting natural gas which would be a great improvement over coal in China. This, along with a pending bankruptcy, is the consequence of spectacular stupidity.
Environmentalists in Canada are very busy trying to prevent the country from producing and exporting natural gas which would be a great improvement over coal in China. This, along with a pending bankruptcy, is the consequence of spectacular stupidity.
More than 80,000 people evacuated from China’s Sichuan
province as extreme rains trigger floods
9 Aug, 2021 08:54
More than 80,000 people evacuated from China’s Sichuan province as extreme rains trigger floods
The Fujiang River, Sichuan province, China (FILE PHOTO) © REUTERS/David Gray (CHINA)
More than 80,000 people have been evacuated from their homes by the authorities as Sichuan is hit by extreme rains, triggering floods, with nearly half a million people impacted across six cities.
On Monday, the authorities in Sichuan, China, told state-run news agency Xinhua that water levels across the province were dangerously high, prompting the evacuation of 80,794 people.
The authorities said that more than 440,000 people had been impacted by the rains, with extreme rainfall being seen across the state. The highest recorded rainfall was in Qingshen in Quxian County, where 575mm (23in) of rainfall was recorded in just two days.
Alert warnings have been raised at 14 monitoring stations along the Fujiang, Jialing, and Qujiang rivers, officials told Xinhua. At one station, the water level exceeded the alert threshold by 1.47m (58in).
On Saturday, state broadcaster CCTV said extreme weather in the southwestern province of Sichuan had already caused 250 million yuan ($38.57 million) in economic losses. It reported that 45 houses had been destroyed while 118 were severely damaged.
Photos and videos shared online show the extent of the damage, as floodwater ravaged towns and cities across the province.
It's clear there will be winners & losers from global warming.
Russia shouldn't be ashamed of standing to gain from a warmer world
Neither should Canada, but we are!
9 Aug, 2021 13:10
Broken ice on the Moscow River. © Sputnik / Konstantin Rodikov
By Artyom Lukin, an associate professor of international relations at Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Russia. Follow him on Twitter @ArtyomLukin
The West’s insistence that climate change will be terrible for everyone is just an ideology. In reality, as with all things, some people will gain and others will lose. Russia, it seems, could emerge in a far stronger position.
From mid-July to early August this year, my hometown of Vladivostok, in the country’s Far East, saw hot and rainless weather on a scale even the old-timers here had never seen before. In the day, temperatures hovered at just below 30C (86F), which, in combination with the humidity coming from the Pacific Ocean, made it an ordeal, especially for those who don’t have air-conditioning at home. The sea off Vladivostok warmed to 29ะก (84F), prompting warnings from scientists about the possibility of sharks swimming into the city’s bays.
Horror stories
The Far East is just one of the many Russian regions enduring abnormal temperatures this summer. In the Rostov region, in the south, a 41C (105F) heatwave led to power outages as residents turned on air-conditioners and fans. Yakutsk, the capital of the republic of Yakutia in Eastern Siberia, was blanketed by the smoke from huge wildfires, apparently induced by the unusually hot and dry weather in June and July.
Western media, led by its flagship newspaper the New York Times, predictably carried horror stories from Russia. According to those reports, the world’s largest nation faces the bleak prospect of being consumed by forest fires, while its housing and infrastructure will soon start to sink into the thawing permafrost. The not-so-subtle subtext of much of such reporting is that Russia probably deserves the climate-related calamities, as, “for years”, its leadership has rejected the fact that humans bear the responsibility for global warming.
It’s true that, until recently, the Kremlin, as well as the majority of Russian citizens, did not care about climate change, because they either didn’t believe in it or didn’t see it as something that could directly impact Russia. That has since changed. This year is shaping up to be the turning point. It has finally dawned on the country – both the political class and many ordinary citizens – that climate change is real, and we are already being affected.
There’s no doubt Vladimir Putin himself has begun to take climate change very seriously. In recent months, the president has repeatedly focused on the climate in his statements and public appearances. Meeting with the cabinet on August 5, he clearly stated that it was the cause of the recent wildfires and floods in the country. According to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the pace of warming in Russia is 2.8 times that of the global average.
Silver linings?
Coming to terms with the reality of climate change and its enormous challenges doesn’t mean Russia should focus only on the threats, while ignoring the benefits it could bring, however. The climate-change narrative currently dominant in the West largely downplays these upsides, while emphasizing the potentially disastrous consequences of global warming. Ironically, just last December, the very same New York Times ran a long read on the potential benefits of global warming for Russia’s agriculture.
According to a study by the Institute of Geography at the Russian Academy of Sciences, in 1961, as much as 63% of Russia’s territory had climatic conditions deemed adverse for humans. By 2010, due to the rise in temperatures, the unfavorable zone had shrunk to 50% of Russia’s landmass.
More research, conducted by scientists at the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and NASA’s Langley Research Center, concludes that global warming will make the climate of Siberia and the Far East more amenable to both life and agriculture. By the 2080s, scientists say, climates over Asian Russia, which makes up two-thirds of the country, are projected to get “much warmer and milder,” which could lead to a five- to seven-fold increase in the capacity of the territory to sustain a human population. This would result in a higher capacity for population density across the area, which is now sparsely inhabited, and make it more attractive for inbound migration.
A 2021 analysis by Princeton University economists predicts that, on average, world fundamental productivity will decline by 19% by 2200 due to rising temperatures. Brazil, Africa, India, Australia, and the Middle East will be the main losers, with declines in economic productivity of up to 60%. However, it will be a very different story in northern latitudes, including much of Russia. Parts of Alaska, northern Canada, Greenland, and northern Russia will see productivity double relative to what it would be without global warming.
Another recent study, authored by scientists from the United States, Canada, and Britain, looks at the areas that could become newly suitable for commercial farming as a result of climate change. They concluded that Russia and Canada had the greatest potential to become the globe’s new agricultural frontiers. Russia could add 4.3 million square kilometers (1.7 million square miles) of new farming land while Canada could add 4.2 million square kilometers (1.6 million square miles).
There is much more on this story on RT.
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Climate change frontline Yakutia: RT journalist joins firefighters
tackling months-long devastating Siberian wildfires
9 Aug, 2021 12:12
Russia is among the nations facing increasingly harsh natural disasters, such as the massive wildfires in the eastern Siberian region of Yakutia. An RT crew joined a group of firefighters doing their best to contain the blazes.
Yakutia is a sparsely populated part of Russia, prone to experiencing long periods of dry weather in summertime. This creates the conditions for massive and difficult-to-control wildfires. This year the threat emerged in mid-spring and, over the months, became quite devastating.
Despite all efforts to contain and douse the flames, some 37,000 square kilometers are affected at the moment. Several villages had to be evacuated before being obliterated. Many people living in parts of Yakutia and neighboring regions have also suffered from smoke inhalation and other hazards affecting their communities.
RT's Dmitry Pauk teamed up with a crew of firefighters in Yakutia, who said their resources have been stretched thin by the sheer size of the disaster. The larger fires, which pose a greater threat, get the priority allocations of manpower and equipment. Brigades dealing with smaller ones have to make the best of what they have.
The crew that welcomed the RT crew is really low-tech, walking on foot in search of smoke and using shovels and manual backpack pumps where necessary. This intensive effort is usually enough to tackle flames on the ground. But there is always the danger of fire spreading across treetops, where it is fanned by the wind, becoming a much bigger hazard.
The destruction from the wildfires can be felt far from Yakutia. This week officials in Yekaterinburg reported that smoke from the Eastern Siberian region had traveled all the way to the major city in the Urals, a 3,000-kilometer journey westward, with the winds.
The Russian emergencies ministry said on Monday it had sent more people and hardware to Yakutia. There are now 4,070 people and 585 pieces of heavy firefighting equipment deployed on the ground there. The military is lending a helping hand, too, sending trucks, military engineering vehicles and personnel to assist the civilian authorities.
Wildfires in Russia and other nations are becoming a bigger challenge, as climate change tends to make some natural disasters more serious with each passing year. California recorded the biggest single wildfire in the state's history last week. Greece and Turkey are each currently waging difficult battles against fires.
Mass graves dug for horses in Kazakhstan as Central Asian steppe
hit by brutal heat wave, leaving wells and rivers running dry
9 Aug, 2021 11:33
Carcasses of animals lie on the ground outside the village of Tushchykudyk amid severe drought in Mangistau Region, Kazakhstan July 27, 2021. © REUTERS/Pavel Mikheyev
International organizations are warning that months of severe drought in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan are causing livestock to perish from hunger and thirst as supplies of food and water vanish in the sweltering heat.
A report by Reuters, published on Saturday, described how mass graves are being dug for hundreds of horses, farmed on the steppes for their meat and milk. One ranch owner, Gabidolla Kalynbayuly, told reporters that 20 of his steeds had already perished in the unseasonable heat this year, which has seen record-shattering temperatures in the Central Asian nation of up to 46.5 Celsius (115.7 Fahrenheit).
After months of sweltering weather, crops have failed and grass used to graze horses has virtually vanished. The drought has also left animals without food or water, while the price of hay and barley has shot up. At the end of July, the European Commission’s humanitarian aid watchdog agency warned that “minimum reserves of food and water are exhausted leading to the mass death of animals” in the west of Kazakhstan.
The government has imposed a six-month ban on the exports of both food and livestock, insisting that produce should stay at home while it struggles to meet demand and rescue the agriculture sector. In addition, the drought has sparked diplomatic tensions with neighboring Kyrgyzstan, which spans the mountains from which Kazakhstan's water sources flow. Kyrgyz officials have come under pressure to ban water exports in response to overall scarcity.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that his country is already seeing the effects of climate change, and being affected disproportionately by global warming. Putin explained that the average annual temperature for the past 44 years has been growing 2.8 times faster in Russia than the global average. “I have already spoken about this, and experts are well aware of this,” he said.
However, there are hopes that climate change could also bring positives to the world’s largest country, with vast regions currently too cold for agriculture thawing and opening up new opportunities for farmers to graze livestock. Analysts have repeatedly pointed to Russia as one potential winner from global climate change, against the backdrop of catastrophic predictions for the fate of much of the southern hemisphere.
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