The authors argue that conservative biases regarding the effects of climate change are glaring in studies done by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and in the Chinese government policies of development both existing and planned. Thus the authors conclude:
It seems astounding that the Chinese government could oversee such a disaster-in-waiting as the rapid industrialisation of the Pearl River Delta. The PRD [key industrial zone] megacity looks like planned insanity. Developments are going ahead without any systematic reference to climate change impacts.
Will the PRD, when it is inundated too often, simply be abandoned after government policy has overseen the inward migration of up to 120 million people to the area by mid-century?
Perhaps then it will be said that China’s manufacturing heartland was sunk by a catastrophic failure of government planning and the failure to integrate known climate change impacts into economic and climate policy.
