18: Zombie Fires

China needs immigrants China is entering a severe demographic crisis. ...... it is now shrinking ....... this falling population will lead to an economic slowdown, with a greater number of dependents and fewer workers to support them. ........ More babies or more immigrants? ....... the Great Leap Forward of 1958 to 1962 – during which a severe famine resulting from bad economic policies contributed to 30 million to 40 million more deaths than would have been expected. ............ In 2015, the government abandoned the one-child policy, permitting all couples in China to have two children. In 2021, the two-child policy was abandoned in favor of a three-child policy. ........ Chinese couples are having fewer children due to the higher living costs and educational expenses involved in having more than one child. ........ China right now has few residents who were born in a foreign country – there are now only around 1 million foreign-born residents in China, or less than 0.1% of the population. ......... Compare its 0.1% of immigrants with near 14% in the U.S. and 18% in Germany. Even Japan and South Korea – which historically have not been high-immigration countries – have higher percentages of foreign-born population, 2% in Japan and 3% in South Korea. ......... China also faces the problem of growing numbers of its population moving to other countries, including the U.S. In 2017, for example, an estimated 10 million people moved from China to live and work in other countries. ......... Currently, foreign-born people cannot attain Chinese citizenship unless they are children of Chinese nationals. Also, foreigners are only allowed to purchase one piece of property in China, and it must be their residence. .......... Chinese “officials boast of a single Chinese bloodline dating back thousands of years.” And that taps into a seemingly deep-rooted belief in racial purity held by many leaders in the Chinese Communist Party. In 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping told Donald Trump, then America’s president: “We people are the original people, black hair, yellow skin, inherited onwards. We call ourselves the descendants of the dragon.” .......... Immigrants are typically of prime working age and very productive; they also tend to have more babies than native-born residents. ........ For immigration to have any reasonable impacts in China, the numbers of people coming into China will need to increase tremendously in the next decade or so – to around 50 million, perhaps higher. Otherwise, in the coming decades, China’s demographic destiny will be one of population losses every year, with more deaths than births, and the country will soon have one of the oldest populations in the world.

‘Zombie fires’ in the Arctic: Canada’s extreme wildfire season offers a glimpse of new risks in a warmer, drier future Apocalyptic orange skies and air pollution levels that force people indoors only tell part of the story ......... These fires aren’t just burning in trees and grasses. New research on the exceptional Arctic fire seasons of 2019 and 2020 points to fires moving into the ground as well. .......... These underground fires are known as “zombie fires,” and there are a number of reasons to worry about the trend. ........... as the organic-rich Arctic soils dry up because of changing climate conditions, they can burn slowly and release vast amounts of smoke into the atmosphere. ........... Firefighters in Alberta, Canada, where carbon-rich peatlands are common, have been dealing with fires smoldering to depths dozens of feet underground in 2023. ........ Arctic soil fires can smolder through the winter and reignite during early spring when temperatures rise, hence the nickname “zombie fires.” ........

The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification.

.......... the Arctic has already exceeded a 2 C (3.6 F) increase compared with pre-industrial times. .......... Among the changing conditions that favor wildfires are changes in atmospheric circulation that create periods of extreme heat, dry out vegetation and reduce moisture in soils, and, importantly, lead to more frequent lightning strikes that can spark blazes. .......... In 2022, thousands of lightning strikes help sparked one of Alaska’s worst fire seasons on record. ............. About 70% of recorded area of Arctic peat affected by burning over the past 40 years occurred in the last eight years, and 30% of it was in 2020 alone, showing the acceleration. .............. Ground fires, on the other hand, do not flame but burn more slowly and have the tendency to spread deep into the ground and spread laterally. ......... These smoldering fires also produce more smoke because of their lower temperature of combustion. Ultra-fine particles in smoke are particularly harmful to the respiratory and cardiovascular systems and can be carried far and wide by winds.