Buddhist Climate Project
350 TARGET:
Dalai Lama’s Endorsement;
background, letter, new developments
Economics of 350
BUDDHIST DECLARATION
ON CLIMATE CHANGE:
Read & Sign it
En Francais
THE BOOK:
Contributors, Overview,
Contents, Excerpts
TAKE ACTION:
Plant a Tree in the Sheltering Grove
THE THIRD POLE:
Food, famine & climate change in India.
Nepal, India, Bangaldesh-
Signs of Deadly Climate Change.
Record Drought in SW China.
China & India: Coal & Collapse.
MULTIMEDIA:
Our Slideshow
ANALAYSIS OF FIRST 5000
DECLARATION SIGNATORIES:
Signatories by Country
Signatories by Affiliation
Dharma Teacher/Scholar Signatories
Ecological Buddhism Blog
Declaration Progress & Key News Updates
Extreme Ice Survey
Seeing Is Believing
Photo Essay (click to watch)
Climate Change: One Planet One Chance
Slideshow (Powerpoint)
Plan B 3.0 - Mobilizing to Save Civilization
PDF (right click & save)
Climate Change, Biggest Global Health Threat of the 21st Century
Tibet and China:
Climate Crisis at the Earth’s Third Pole
With appreciation for the indispensable work of Lester Brown
One fundamental attitude shared by Buddhism and science is the commitment to keep searching for reality by empirical means and to be willing to disregard accepted or long-held positions if our search finds the truth is different.
-Dalai Lama XIV
The rugged snow-covered peaks of the Tibet/Nepal Himalayas—photo taken from the International Space Station, 200 miles up. The 7th highest peak on Earth, Dhaulagiri, is the high point on the horizon at left. In the foreground is the southern Tibetan plateau. Courtesy NASA
The emerging Chinese water crisis
Expanding water use was the key factor in tripling the world's grain harvest between 1950 and 2000. Yet as water demand tripled over the last 50 years, we have been accumulating a dangerous water-deficit. It is still largely invisible, because most of it results from over-pumping aquifers— undergound water reservoirs.
China and India, with their huge populations, are the biggest grain producers in the world. In both counties, millions of new irrigation wells have exceeded the replenishment rate of the aquifers. Fossil aquifers, like the one under the North China Plain, are not replenishable—when those become depleted, agriculture in the region concerned simply ceases, permanently. The groundwater tables are rapidly depleting in both countries, which are home to most of the world's population. Both have also been diverting water from agriculture to industrialization and urbanization. We have to keep in mind that the production of every ton of grain takes 1000 tons of water. The loss of agricultural production on this scale can only be made up by importing grain.
Disappearing rivers and lakes
China's largest freshwater lake, Poyang, lies in the south-eastern province of Jiangxi. It is the winter home of 98% of the world's Siberian crane population. The famous lake fluctuates between a winter dry period and summer flood season, and its hydrology depends on the Yangtse River. In 2007, it provided a disturbing example of synergy between climate warming and groundwater depletion. Its surface area shrank from over 3,000 square kilometres (summer) to 50 square kilometres (winter). This was 10 times worse than the previous year's figures. Poyang Lake in winter 2007 looked like this:
The official Chinese news agency, Xinhua, reported that 100,000 people were suffering drinking-water shortages around Poyang. One village could use only 4 of its 56 wells. The government did not amend regulations on the industrial use of water by factories near the lake. This kind of grave environmental problem, aggravated by years of stubbornly pursuing economic growth, is commonplace in China. Poyang is a poster-child for China's multiple water crises. In 2008 the State Council admitted:
By 2030, China will have exploited all its available water supplies to the limit.
Yangste River at Yangzhou: in April 2008, the middle & lower reaches
of this great river were at their lowest level since records began.
By February 2009, the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters had declared a "serious" level 2 emergency, on a four-stage scale where level 1 is the worst. Some areas of the country had seen no rain or snow since November 2008. Almost half of China's wheat crop, grown in just eight provinces, over an area of 9.5 million hectares, was subject to the drought. This situation could extend into a multi-year trend, as has happened in Australia. In other words, the choice may already be manifesting between agriculture and the fossil fuel economy. China and Australia are respectively the world’s largest user and exporter of coal, the most polluting form of fossil carbon fuel.
Jialing River, Chongquing, 2007 : water levels of major rivers (Yangtse,
Yellow & Jialing) have reached record lows due to warm temperatures.
“Who will feed China?”
China’s route to development differed from that of the West, because the country was densely populated before its industrial revolution. Under Mao, the great famine of 1959-1961 claimed 30 million lives. In 1995, the eminent environmental scientist Lester Brown published Who Will Feed China? (Environmental Alert Series, Worldwatch Institute) urging a coherent response to the convergence of high population, shrinking cropland, and water scarcity.
The pressure of industrialization displaced essential cropland, leading to a net decline in food production, despite rising agricultural productivity. China diverted irrigation water to non-farm uses extensively, although some 80% of its grain harvest comes from irrigated land. Shrinking resources were compounded by rising grain consumption. As incomes rose, people added meat, poultry, dairy, and even beer to their diet, high-end products demanding even more grain. Although China has a relatively stringent demographic policy, its population is rising by 12 million per year. These factors have combined to produce a “food bubble economy” where the harvest is inflated by unsustainable water-use. A serious future fall in Chinese food production looks inevitable. This context defines the interdependence of Tibet, China, India and Asia as a whole—in terms of climate warming, carbon gas emissions, agriculture, water use and mutual survival.
Tibetan glaciers and the fate of Asian civilization
The Kunlun mountains (N.Tibet) seen from space, courtesy NASA
The Tibetan plateau with 46,000 glaciers at an average height of 13,000 ft above sea level, is the Earth’s third largest ice mass. This “Third Pole” is less well-known than the Arctic and Antarctic, but like them, is an integral part of the planet’s cryosphere. Climate warming is causing deglaciation up to 7% a year. The average temperature on the plateau is rising 7 times as fast as in China proper.
Southeast Asia is a global hotspot for black carbon (BC)—after global warming, this is the second most important cause of glacier retreat on the plateau. BC emissions originate from coal-fired power stations, diesel engines, and traditional cooking (with wood, dung, and crop residues). BC particulates remain in the atmosphere for a few weeks, as opposed to carbon dioxide which remains in the atmosphere for more than one hundred years. When they precipitate onto snow and ice, they reduce its ability to reflect sunlight. Hence, reducing black carbon emissions would be an effective short-term way to slow down glacier loss.
Electron microscope image of a particle of Black Carbon soot
The great Tibetan glaciers have been taken for granted since long before agriculture began in Asia. Yet they have always been an essential pre-condition for it, since Asia’s major rivers—the Yangtse, Yellow, Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Salween and Mekong—derive the balancing factor for year-round flow from glacial melt water. As the glaciers retreat, the volume of water in the great rivers will increase at first, causing widespread flooding. Then it will go into rapid decline, reducing volume and flow, until they become merely seasonal. It is therefore incumbent on both Chinese and Indian governments to make radical, science-based policy changes as soon as possible and move to low-carbon economies. Unless they do so, devastating water shortages will result within decades for billions of their citizens.
Climate warming is already causing widespread ecological decline at the headwaters of the Yellow River, threatening water supplies to 120 million people in China. Melting glaciers and permafrost are breaking up and drying out the land, turning grasslands into desert and leaving lakes and rivers without water. The headwater region plays the major role in supplying the whole Yellow river basin, and provides 55% of the water for its first 550km:
From here it is a domino effect that harms the flora, fauna, landscape and people of the Yellow River source region, and ultimately the river itself....Water shortage and reduced run-off at the source will have far-reaching impacts on the economy, society and people - not only in the source region but in the middle and low reaches of the Yellow River.
-Professor Liu Shiyin, Team Leader
Avoiding meltdown and famine
Many Tibetan glaciers could disappear entirely by mid-century, unless current trends of business-as-usual and carbon gas emissions are reversed. When the shrinkage of underground water is combined with that of the great glaciers, “permanent famine conditions” could arise. World food prices recently climbed to record highs, and China is likely to hold down domestic food prices by using its massive dollar holdings to import grain from the United States. Economists who projected ‘ascendant world power' status for China have demonstrated little or no understanding of real-world limitations such as hydrology, agriculture, plant biology or climate change. Therefore the real challenge is to re-design national energy policies in Asia, to save the glaciers upon which Tibet, China, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Burma, Thailand and Laos all depend. If Asia pursues an economic competition based on fossil fuels, the outcome will amount to “mutually assured destruction”. China and India both need to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2030.
Ironically, the two countries that are building most of the new coal-fired power plants, China and India, are precisely the ones whose food security is most massively threatened by the carbon emitted from burning coal. It is now in their interest to try and save their mountain glaciers by shifting energy investment from coal-fired power plants into energy efficiency and into wind farms, solar thermal power plants, and geothermal power plants. China, for example, can double its current electrical generating capacity from wind alone.
-Lester Brown, 2008
Coal or Renewable Energy in China?
A fateful choice for Asia.
Only one of China's two “energy futures” is survivable. Its government’s economic policies have created the world's worst air pollution problems, and propelled the country to overtake the U.S as the world’s largest source of CO2 emissions. Chinese society strongly emphasizes reputation and social standing—these are felt to be enhanced by consumption and electricity usage. The government practices “making face”' with the world by solving showcase pollution problems while constructing hundreds more pulverized-coal fired power plants.
Chinese coal mining, burning and imports have now reached their highest-ever levels. Employment trumps environmental protection at every turn. These readily observable facts lend credibility to Professor James Lovelock’s assertion in "The Revenge of Gaia":
We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and the survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate.
China is also making a well-organized national drive for renewable energy. Its vast and accessible interior and coasts make wind power a favourite. The lure of its huge market and low production costs for exports have encouraged foreign and domestic firms to set up wind farms and turbine production plants across the country. The government recently raised its wind power target for the year 2020 to 30GW. National utilities are mandated to generate 10% of electricity from renewable energy by 2020. In 2007, the country installed the most wind power of any country—3.4GW.
The competition between coal and renewable energy in China will play a central role in determining the fate of civilization. Coal burning is the principal driver of global warming, and we are approaching atmospheric CO2 concentrations where climate change could cross a tipping point into runaway global warming. China dramatically embodies the conflict between the two “energy futures” of humanity.