Adapting to the climate crisis will require societal transformation, not least in China and Hong Kong
Hong Kong Free Press
By John Barkdull and Paul G. Harris
Every day brings news of the effects of climate change on human communities. For example, low rainfall and other factors associated with climate change have exacerbated the fires that are now consuming neighbourhoods in the Los Angeles area of California.
Globally, 2024 was the warmest year ever recorded – and the warmest year in at least 125,000 years – in the warmest decade on record. Last year was also the warmest year ever recorded in China and, not surprisingly, also the warmest year on record in Hong Kong.
Scientists have warned for decades that carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution from humanity’s continued burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas – would warm the planet and result in increasingly painful heatwaves, droughts, storms, floods and other consequences. You reap what you sow.
Despite increasing concern about climate change around the world, including in China, and the gradual rollout of alternative energy sources, notably from wind and sunlight, the increasing demand for energy means that global CO2 emissions are still increasing.
China is the source of one-third of those emissions. It’s impossible to tackle climate change if China fails to bring them down drastically. Yet, China is setting records in its use of coal despite a sluggish economy.
Hong Kong is also wedded to fossil fuels. Our increasing use of natural gas, which the Hong Kong government wrongly calls “clean and environment-friendly,” comes as little comfort when new research shows that imported liquified natural gas produces much more CO2 pollution than coal.
Put simply, China and Hong Kong, like the rest of the world, are still going in the wrong direction.
Because atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are so high – they have more than doubled just in the last few decades – our planet is inevitably locked into further warming and other manifestations of climate change. Even, if by some miracle, societies were to move quickly to lower global CO2 pollution to mitigate future impacts, much more warming is inevitable.
Consequently, it is imperative that societies quickly find ways to adapt effectively to a warmer, more hostile future. Doing this will require transformational adaptation that provides enough resilience to preserve societies in more or less their present form.
Perhaps the most common understanding of transformation in this context is a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. However, a more ambitious understanding is to view “transformation” as fundamental changes to modern civilisation.
The latter perspective encompasses such proposals as the “steady state” economy, “degrowth,” “eco-socialism,” and possibly even Chinese President Xi Jinping’s notion of “ecological civilisation.”
Current social assumptions and practices are incompatible with averting and coping with the worsening climate crisis.
Current political and economic priorities, such as individual consumerism, business profit maximisation, and government military spending, are diversions from effective adaptation to climate change.
Transformational adaptation will require major social changes, including reordered priorities, sufficient resources and genuine democracy, to enable environmental sustainability. The current focus on GDP growth – fuelled by the incessant extraction of resources and causing greenhouse gases and other pollution – will have to be replaced by measures that prioritise social well-being and environmental health.
Transformational adaptation will require limiting the power of corporations and billionaires, doing more to regulate industries and to tax extreme wealth, increasing the well-being and power of individuals, distributing financial resources more fairly, and facilitating more democracy so that those affected by climate change have a say in how to respond to it.
The Chinese government has advocated a transition to “ecological civilisation.” In principle, such a civilisation would encompass long-term sustainability and living in harmony with the natural world. In reality, the idea of ecological civilisation is honoured in the breach in China, just as it is in most of the world. When the nice idea of ecological civilisation butts up against GDP growth, the latter still wins every time.
In the affluent world, we still seem to think that life can go on without major change. Many people in Los Angeles, one of the world’s richest cities, are learning the consequences of such indifference to climate change. They weren’t the first and won’t be the last.
In Hong Kong, the assumption may be that hypermodern lifestyles and air-conditioned concrete buildings will protect everyone from climate change. But it is just a matter of time before Hong Kong is battered by back-to-back super typhoons that may knock out power for prolonged periods. Vulnerable people will die as their concrete homes become uninhabitable ovens.
And Hong Kong may not have long to wait before a prolonged drought puts it into intense competition with cities on the mainland for dwindling water supplies. Will people in Guangdong be willing to go without water for the benefit of Hong Kong? Even Hong Kong’s wealth won’t be enough to prevent it from experiencing the kind of suffering from climate change already felt elsewhere.
See also: Wealthy Hong Kong districts will warm at a cooler pace than poorer areas, study finds
Alas, many forces are acting against a move toward a more ecologically sustainable future, not least China’s continued devotion to coal and the return of Donald Trump, an unhinged climate denialist, to The White House. This guarantees that effective climate adaptation will become more urgent with each passing year.
Consequently, transformational adaptation, and the changes to economic and political institutions that it will require, may move up the world’s agenda. This will take time – far too much time – but it may be the best that the world can hope for as the climate crisis inflicts worsening pain and suffering.
The sooner societies realise this, the sooner they can get to work transforming society. Instead of talking about an ecological civilisation, let’s make one and live in it.
John Barkdull is an emeritus professor at Texas Tech University. He is the author of Confronting Climate Change: From Mitigation to Adaptation.
Paul G. Harris is a chair professor at the Education University of Hong Kong. His many books include Pathologies of Climate Governance: International Relations, National Politics and Human Nature.
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