From "on" to "off"

Since July, high temperature caused a severe meteorological drought in the Yangtze River Basin. 

Getty Images / Stringer

Ah, phase transitions are never linear as seen by what's happening relating to the insane acceleration of global warming and the impact it's having on earth in ways both astonishing and terrifying at the same time. For China, it's the Yangtze River, the largest in Asia, an essential resource for millions of people, now drying up thanks to a drought for the ages.

To those who rely on the river for water, energy, and employment, it’s as if Mother Nature suddenly turned the spigot on a hose from “on” to “off”—which could have dire consequences not only for China but also for the rest of the world.

“China is on the brink of a water catastrophe,” the Council on Foreign Relations reported this month in its magazine, Foreign Affairs. “Given the country’s overriding importance to the global economy, potential water-driven disruptions beginning in China would rapidly reverberate through food, energy, and materials markets around the world and create economic and political turbulence for years to come.”

As Asia’s longest river, and the third-longest river in the world, the Yangtze is ground zero for China’s escalating water woes. It supports more than 450 million people and a third of China’s crops.

We did this to ourselves ...

According to a 2021 report by Rhodium Group, China’s carbon emissions exceed those of all developed countries combined. Although its annual emissions were less than a quarter of developed country emissions in 1990, its emissions over the past three decades have more than tripled, reaching over 14 gigatons in 2019, Rhodium reported. That’s over 27% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 11% contributed by the United States, the world’s second-largest emitter.1

A wicked problem ...

Unfortunately, extreme weather is increasing instead of decreasing China’s reliance on carbon, according to Bloomberg News, which said the Yangtze’s retreating water levels have made it difficult to generate electricity at many of the country’s key hydropower plants—China’s largest source of clean energy. Without those plants, it reported, China has had to rely more on coal power. So much so that coal mines in China have increased their output this year by 11%.1

Years ago, the Yangtze looked like this.

Dusk on Chang Jiang (Yangtze)

Andrew Hitchcock - Flickr

Remember, it's just the beginning ...

A typical phase diagram. The dotted line gives the anomalous behavior of water.

We've passed the critical point IMHO.