China

2009_Freeman_The Climate Winner Argument

China, a rising international power of tremendous strategic importance

to the United States, is also vulnerable to disasters precipitated by

climate change.215 Climate change likely will affect China by reducing

water supplies in the North, causing extreme weather in the South, and

raising the sea level, threatening hundreds of millions of people in

densely populated coastal regions.216 China faces serious indirect costs,

as well. China increasingly depends heavily on imports from East Africa

and South Asia to fuel economic growth. As a result it is especially vulnerable

to unstable energy supplies in these regions, which themselves will

be among the hardest hit by climate change.217 A serious interruption of

supply could considerably slow China’s growth, which could in turn undermine

the legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party, leading to political

instability. Of course this series of events is speculative, but it is certainly

plausible. And although it is hard to predict how China’s instability

would affect the United States, China’s military and economic might,

combined with its ability to make trouble in a volatile region, make considerable

and costly effects probable.