China’s state-run English language mouthpiece continues it’s environmental crusade with an blunt look at how the country’s poorest are suffering the most from rising temperatures. The piece focuses on the Sichuan Basin (ÂõõÂ∑ùÁõÜÂú∞ ) near Chongqing, hit hard this year by an unusually severe series of natural disasters attributed to climate change:
Zhao has survived a flood spilling from a reservoir overhead while trapped between a pipe and a wall for six hours in the poverty-stricken Tongjiang County in sichuan. Before dawn on July 2, her husband He Qiang, 31, daughter He Qian, 10, and son He Hongxiang, 7, were killed in the flash flood caused by storms roaring through the mountainous county. There is still no sign of her little son’s body.
“I lost my family, my home has become debris, and I have no hope of life,” sobbed Zhao. Before the disaster, she and her husband earned their living by peddling local snacks from early morning to late at night on the town’s bumpy road. [Full Text]
The piece goes on to report that economic losses from natural disasters in Tongjiang this year already total 400 million RMB against the 10 million RMB in state relief funds earmarked for the county.
[Image: A villager in walks over parched land in rural Sichuan, via China Daily.]
