Trail of destruction traces back to fossil fuels

A large-scale wind farm in Wenchang, a coastal city in the northeast of Hainan Island, was almost completely destroyed by Super Typhoon Yagi on Friday.

The second-strongest typhoon so far this year hit Wenchang andswept across the island, home to nearly 11 million people, at a speed of 223 kilometers per hour. Four people lost their lives. It is astounding that it was not more. That is due to the local government's early warning and local residents' experience-honed self-rescue capabilities.

However, the damage inflicted on infrastructure by Yagi was grave, as shown by the messy trail it has left in its wake.

Previously the islanders, mostly fishers and farmers, lived in low-lying buildings that could be easily recovered if damaged by a typhoon without causing heavy casualties. Yet over the past nearly three decades, such functional buildings were replaced by high-rise buildings for luxurious hotels, resorts, duty-free shops and modern expressway networks, while their previous owners' offspring have become landlords, business owners, investors, taxi drivers, waiters and tourist guides. Hainan has thus been built into a national model of smart cities, green development and clean energy to attract tourists and investors from around the world, showcasing the country's openness, modernity and environmentally friendly development approach.

However, the long blackout the island suffered after the hurricane and the messiness of the towns not only pose a sharp contrast with Hainan's previous neatness and modernity, but more importantly prompt a question: whether smartness, sustainability and modernity should be redefined in the face of increasing frequency of extreme weather events.

In another extreme weather event, the homes of residents in remote sparsely populated regions ringing China's largest Taklimakan Desert in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region were destroyed last month by an unprecedented flood triggered by water that had melted from the fast-shrinking ice and snow caps on the top of the mountain ranges bordering the desert to its north and south.

Those trying to take the Wenchang wind farm as a case to defend the use of fossil fuels should be reminded that is the root cause of the extreme weather events which are a result of climate change.

What is more urgent is to ensure the nuclear power stations in China's coastal regions, which are among the most vulnerable to hurricanes in the world, can withstand the test of the "changing times" to avoid the repetition of the Fukushima incident.

All that being said, to ease nature's wrath, innovation and science and technology should be harnessed in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.