The heatwave, which has spanned the past 70 days, is the longest and most widespread on record in the country and has left stretches of the Yangtze River and dozens of other tributaries dry. This has severely affected China’s hydropower capacity and caused rolling blackouts, while there are also concerns about the effects of the heat wave on crops. The southwestern region of Chongqing has been hit particularly hard, with one resident, Zhang Ronghai, saying both his water and power supply had been cut off after a four-day mountain fire in the Jiangjin district. “People have to go to a power center more than 10 kilometers (6 miles) away to charge their phones,” Zhang said. On Wednesday, images shared on China’s Twitter-like service Weibo showed residents and volunteers in Chongqing and Sichuan struggling and even fainting in intense heat during mandatory tests for Covid-19. People walk along the dry riverbed of the Jialing River, a tributary of the Yangtze (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) Crop damage and water shortages could “spread to other food-related sectors, resulting in a significant increase in prices or a food crisis in the most severe case,” said Lin Zhong, a professor at the City University of Hong Kong who has studied the impact. of climate change in agriculture in China. China has warned that it is particularly vulnerable to climate change, and natural disasters are expected to multiply in the coming years as a result of more erratic weather conditions. Cracked dry mud is seen in a community tank in Longquan Village in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) As the drought persists, state media are turning their attention to the impact of climate change in other countries. “Climate change is once again a wake-up call for the world,” the official newspaper of China’s corruption watchdog said on Tuesday, adding that devastating heatwaves and droughts had hit Europe, Africa and North America in recent weeks. Gan Bingdong stands in the basin of a community reservoir near his farm in Longquan Village (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) China, the world’s biggest emitter of climate-warming greenhouse gases, has pledged to peak Co2 before 2030 and become “carbon neutral” by 2060, while also pushing ahead with the development of renewable energy. But the drought has eroded hydropower production and coal-fired electricity is on the rise again, with factories in Anhui province increasing output by 12 percent compared to normal years. People sit in a shallow pool of water on the bed of the Jialing River, a tributary of the Yangtze, in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality (AP) Li Shuo, Greenpeace’s Beijing-based climate adviser, warned that power shortages “could easily be used as an argument to build more coal plants”, but said a summer of extremes around the world could lead to in taking more measures. Additional reporting by AP
