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Cooling strategy needed

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-02-18 07:43

The worst drought to hit northern and central China in half a century has again reminded us of the urgency to get prepared for unexpected extreme weather conditions.

It is necessary to divert water from major rivers to irrigate parched farmland and bring rainfall to quench the thirst of dehydrated crops by firing cloud-seeding chemicals into the sky.

But a long-term strategy is needed to not only deal with unexpected natural disasters but to reduce the green house emissions that have contributed to global warming.

China's meteorological department needs to further advance its technology for more accurate and earlier weather forecast, which will make it possible to prepare well for possible economic and human losses from natural calamities.

What is even harder to implement and requires the efforts of every individual is the mission to reduce carbon footprints, believed to be the root cause of climate change.

The goal of the country's 11th Five Year Plan to reduce the total amount of pollutants by 10 percent and energy intensity by 20 percent by the end of 2011 is not only meant to realize sustainable economic growth, but also to cut green house emissions.

But that is far from enough. Awareness that climate change is caused by global warming and about to choke us is way too low to drum home the necessity of minimizing personal carbon footprints.

Car washing is a typical example. A member of the Beijing municipal committee of the National People's Political Consultative Conference proposed this week to ban the use of fresh water for car washing. This member, who himself owns 15 car service outlets, revealed that the total consumption of fresh water for car washing could be as much as 30 million tons a year in Beijing alone.

The waste of such a large volume of fresh water is a great drain on rapidly receding ground water resources. If recycled water can be used instead, the amount of fresh water to be saved will make a great difference to agricultural irrigation in the capital's neighboring areas.

Another waste that has even more to do with green house emissions is central heating. Most households do not have devices to control the temperature of their rooms. Even if the temperature is too high, they can do nothing to lower it other than opening windows.

If they can control the temperature, it will mean not only less coal or gas is burned but also reduce green house emissions. There is actually a lot more we can do to reduce our exploitation of nature.

Although we can hardly achieve immediate effects from doing these, they will reduce the pace of global warming and thus the chances of extreme weather conditions which threaten our lives.

(China Daily 02/18/2009 page8)