Two snow crises, three decades apart
Lei Xiong
February 14, 2008
Snow chaos hit China 30 years after the northern US suffered the effects of a great blizzard. Lei Xiong looks for the lessons both can teach us about resilience and development.
“The modernisation we seek should improve our capacity to cope with disasters like the one we recently faced, rather than increase our vulnerability to it.”
It so happens that while China mobilised to fight the worst snow disaster in recent memory, many people in the United States were commemorating the 30th anniversary of another snow crisis.
Going down in history as the “Great Blizzard of 1978,” the “white hurricane” that swept the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes in late January and early February meant many residents were left with no power, heat or transportation for days or weeks on end. People were trapped in their houses, their offices or on roads. A state of emergency was announced in many states. The National Guard was called in to aid people stranded on highways.
Many Americans who lived through the blizzard have never forgotten it, just as their Chinese counterparts will not forget the latest snow disaster to their country.
Records show that the 1978 blizzard caused US$500 million in damages to Massachusetts alone. It is unclear how much the snow disaster will have cost China, but it is almost certain to have hit us harder, since we are at our annual peak of national mobility prior to the Lunar New Year, an important festival for family reunions.
It is pointless to compare the damage, however. What is noteworthy is the similar challenge that the two crises pose to us thirty years apart.
Many agree that the recent snowstorms highlight the vulnerability of China’s booming economy. It is obvious that the extreme weather caught the Chinese government and people unprepared, worsening power shortages, traffic congestion and inflation.
Similar scenarios were seen during the Great Blizzard of 1978. Some foods were rationed, and in disaster areas many were left without heat, water, food or electricity for over a week. Schools were closed for weeks.
Yet even 30 years back, the US, as a developed superpower, was far better off than China today. The northern US states hit by the blizzard were better equipped to handle ice and snow than the south China provinces hit by the recent snow chaos.
Nevertheless, as Thomas Schmidlin, a weather historian and professor of Geography at Kent State University, remarked 25 years after the 1978 blizzard: “With our comforts of cars, electricity, and heating, we may actually be more vulnerable to these blizzards than Ohioans of the nineteenth century, who were more independent and could tolerate disruptions of a few days.”
This is perhaps an inconvenient truth for both countries. Although we are at varying levels of development, we seem equally impotent when faced with natural disasters. Our modern infrastructures seem to be paralysed by extreme weather.
People in South China are fighting the snow disaster heroically. They were only able to minimise the damage, however, rather than protect themselves in the first place. Even if infrastructure is improved after the snow crisis, we cannot guarantee that our highways are not shut down, flights are not cancelled and railways unaffected when we next have bad weather.
When the modernity we rely on so heavily is this vulnerable to the elements, do we not have to consider the extent of our reliance? When all your heating is electric, what do you do when the coal power stations shut down?
Of course, we cannot and should not return to the Stone Age, just to avoid the effects of extreme weather. But it is disastrous if we have no alternatives to the transport links and communication lines that have proved so vulnerable.
Perhaps we could get some inspiration from the role played by internal combustion locomotives during the current snow disaster. When the power failure paralyzed electric locomotives, internal combustion locomotives served as “ferry engines” to rescue other trains.
The electric locomotive would normally seem “more advanced” than its internal combustion counterpart, but not during this crisis.
Both snow crises send us a similar warning: the modernisation we are so proud of may not be as powerful as it looks. We have to find a way to develop that can sustain us in all weathers. The modernisation we seek should improve our capacity to cope with disasters like the one we recently faced, rather than increase our vulnerability to it.
Xiong Lei is a council member of China Society for Human Rights Studies.
Homepage photo by Jin Aili
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中国人对雪灾的应对恰好表明了我们能够做到多少。也许下次牢骚满腹的英国人在碰到“铁道上有落叶”而在路上多花了1个小时时应该想一想中国这次遭受的灾难。
The Chinese reaction to the snowstorms shows just how much people can cope with; something moaning Brits should remember next time the commute home takes an extra hour due to "leaves on the line".
我认为有太多太多的人对正在发生的一些变化视而不见。有越来越多的科学证据表明人类已经对地球上有限的资源、脆弱的生态系统和我们已知的生命产生了大规模的有害影响。在大量的精心设计的气候变化有关研究的支持下，杰出的科学家们如Rajendra K. Pachauri博士、James Hansen博士、Hans J. Schellnhuber博士、和Christopher Rapley博士在本月向各国政府首脑和全人类发布了气候红色警报，呼吁应在政治家和经济首脑间开展开放的磋商并采取行动。
Something is happening that many too many people appear not to be seeing, I suppose.
Scientific evidence is springing up everywhere that indicates the massive and pernicious impact of the human species on the limited resources of Earth, its frangible ecosystems and life as we know it.
Guided by mountains of carefully and skillfully developed research regarding climate change, top rank scientists like Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Hans J. Schellnhuber and Dr. Christopher Rapley issued a Climate Code Red emergency declaration this month to leaders of governments and to the family of humanity proclaiming the necessity for open discussion and action by politicians and economic powerbrokers.
愚以为，许多世界政治及经济的领导人都对人类的过度消费、过度生产和人口过度繁衍的行为视而不见，而这些行为正在不负责任的消耗自然资源，并造成了地球家园环境的严重退化。地球正在被掠夺，而许多领导人却有意拒绝承认正在发生的这一切。由于人类即将面临的新的全球挑战被许多一流的科学家认为是人类自身导致的，领导人们有责任采取行动，不管其做好准备与否，或喜欢与否。
From my humble perspective, many leaders of the global political economy are turning a blind eye to human over-consumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities that can be seen recklessly dissipating the natural resources and dangerously degrading the environs of our planetary home. The Earth is being ravaged; but it appears many leaders are willfully refusing to acknowledge what is happening.
Because the emerging global challenges that could soon be presented to humanity appear to so many fine scientists as human-induced, leaders have responsibilities to assume and duties to perform, ready or not, like them or not.
也许我们这个时代的领导层时常无视具备一定真实性的任何事物，以换取对于政治上适宜、经济上方便、社会上融洽、宗教上宽容和文化上合宜的任何事物的信任。当真实情况与领导人们愿意相信的发生直接冲突时，现实往往被否认。当对其私人利益有益时，许多领导人会紧紧抓住那些广泛认同的和一致认可的华而不实的宏大思想不放并以此为满足。难道人类生活又回到了一种被成为经济全球化的现代巴别塔所控制的时代吗？是不是人类的思想、判断和意志被我们对人为捏造的全球政治经济的偶像崇拜削弱的如此之严重，以致于我们只能谈论经济增长和利润之类的事，否则我们就会被人当作十足的白痴？Steven Earl对于人口与沙丁鱼认识的宣传活动，2001年设立。http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Perhaps leadership in our time has too often chosen to ignore whatsoever is somehow real in order to believe whatever is politically convenient, economically expedient, socially agreeable, religiously tolerated and culturally prescribed. When something real directly conflicts with what leaders wish to believe, that reality is denied. It appears that too many leaders are content to hold tightly to widely shared and consensually validated specious thinking when it serves their personal interests.
Is humanity once again finding life as we know it dominated by a modern Tower of Babel called economic globalization? That is, has human thinking, judging and willing become so egregiously impaired by our idolatry of the artificially designed, manmade, global political economy that we cannot speak intelligibly about anything else except economic growth and profits without sounding like blithering idiots?
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
这似乎不是第一次了，同样的灾难在世界不同地区重复地出现，这到底是必然还是偶然呢？就像经济快速增长带来的环境污染和生态破坏一样，人类到底能否避免？或是只能学习如何应对？
This doesn't seem like the first time that the same type of environmental disaster re-occurs in different locations. Is this purely a coincidence or not? Just like the pollution and ecological destruction brought by rapid economic growth, can mankind evade it? Or merely study how to react to it?
太多的世界上政治和经济的领袖们丢弃了其应有的道义责任，对人类的过度消费、生产过剩和人口过剩视而不见，而这一切都在毫无顾忌的挥霍着自然资源，同时造成了我们地球环境的急剧退化。地球在遭受掠夺，但是政治家们、CEO们和其它组织的领袖们却不愿承认现实。负责任的、称职的、富有勇气的科学们都倾向于认为人类面临的全球性的挑战是由人类自身导致的，而政治和经济领域的领导人却仍然有意回避其责任，但是如果我们要保护已知的生命、如果我们要给我们的子孙后代留下一个完整的地球，我们就必须承担这种责任，尽管它有那么一点不受欢迎，也有一点意外。
Are many too many leaders of the global political economy spurning their moral obligations by turning a blind eye to human over-consumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities that can be seen recklessly dissipating the natural resources and drastically degrading the environs of our planetary home? The Earth is being ravaged; but it appears too many politicians, CEOs and institutional executives are willfully refusing to acknowledge what is happening.
Because the emerging global challenges that could soon be confronted by humanity appear to so many responsible, able and courageous scientists to be human-induced, many of our political leaders and economic powerbrokers have evidently been eschewing unwelcome responsibilities and unexpected duties which must be assumed now if life as we know it and the integrity of Earth are to be preserved for our children and coming generations.
在6月11号致给北卡罗来纳州报主编Chapel Hill的信中存在解决方法如果我们应用到科学。第一部分：人类一定会实现中国的一句古话：“我们生活在一个有趣的世界。”我们很多卓越的科学家都说上帝是虚幻的。而另一方面，有天生直觉的信仰者却经常告诉我们这些科学家们也被直觉虚幻性的无神论所困。我猜想没有人会知道谁才是正确的。我是相信人类社会可以利用上帝给予的科学天赋去量度全球所面临挑战然后找出与普世价值观念一致的解决方法。但是，在我们转移到适度地对抗和理性解决一个类似与全球变暖这个对人类健康和环境卫生构成威胁的挑战之前，我们需要开阔地认识并广泛地对它进行讨论。我猜想是我的人生经历用来建议我们在贯彻“治疗”选项前，要正确地“诊断”挑战所在。
letter to the editor
Chapel Hill (NC) Newspaper
June 11, 2008
Solutions exist if we apply the science.
PART 1
Humankind is surely experiencing the fulfillment of a Chinese proverb: "We live in interesting times." Many of our brilliant scientists report that God is a delusion. On the other hand, intuitive and gifted believers regularly tell us that these scientists themselves suffer from a form of delusional atheism. No one knows, I suppose, which of these groups is correct.
I am one of those people who believes the family of humanity can use God's gift of science to take the measure of any global challenge and find solutions that are consonant with universal values. But, before we can move forward to reasonably address and sensibly overcome a challenge to human wellbeing and environmental health such as global warming, that challenge needs to be openly acknowledged and widely discussed. I suppose it is a function of my life experience to suggest that we accurately "diagnose" whatever the challenge is before proceeding to implement "treatment" options.
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