Tibetan Review
May 7, 2015
Qinghai-Tibet Railway
China’s top meteorologist has warned that climate change was threatening some of the country’s most important infrastructure projects, including the Three Gorges Dam and the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. The head of China’s Meteorological Administration, Zheng Guoguang, has also told the weekly state-run newspaper Study Times that the rate of warming in China was higher than the global average.
Zheng has said the uptick in recent weather disasters such as floods, typhoons, droughts and heat waves had a “big connection” to climate change. He has added that such catastrophes were a threat to big-ticket projects such as the Three Gorges Dam and the Qinghai-Tibet Railway.
He has told the paper, which is published by the Central Party School, that global warming can further affect the safety and stability of these big projects including their operational and economical effectivity along with technological progress and engineering techniques and standards.
Zheng has suggested that in order to focus more on an effective and sustainable growth path, China has to deal with climate change first.
China is the biggest source of greenhouse gases on the planet, which is the main precursor of climate change. Sixty percent of carbon dioxide emissions in China is composed of coal that are now causing severe health problems among locals due to the thick smog it generates, the report noted.
