The environmental situation in China has gotten alarmingly bad, according to news reports and, most tellingly, a statement from the Chinese government itself. 

Cancer is now the leading cause of death in the Asian country; it's linked to one in four deaths nationwide. Lung cancer is the most common form.

Although more than half the men in China smoke tobacco (less than 3 percent of the women do), the data points to air and water pollution as major causes of the cancer epidemic.

There are cancer clusters in the small towns and cities that house the country's major industries.

Coal-fired electricity is responsible for 70 percent of the soot that darkens China's skies and two thirds of the country's nitrogen oxide pollution, an ingredient of harmful ground level ozone.

New studies document that if the air pollution controls instituted, due to international pressure, before and during the Beijing Olympics were made permanent, they could reduce residents' hydrocarbon inhalation-related cancer risk by nearly half.

In rural areas, lung cancer is less dominant. Liver, lung and stomach cancers each accounts for about one fifth of cancer deaths. A Chinese farmer's risk of liver cancer is more than three times the worldwide average. Rural Chinese people die of stomach cancer at twice the global average. Both types of cancer are linked to consumption of polluted water. 

According to the Chinese government itself, half of the country's rivers and more than three out of of four lakes and reservoirs are too polluted to provide safe drinking water even after treatment. But those waters nonetheless supply huge numbers of people.

The government has also acknowledged that its ambitious Three Gorges dam has contributed to low water levels in two of China's biggest freshwater lakes at a time when large areas of central and southern China are suffering from the worst drought in 50 years. Crops have been destroyed.

In one of the bitter ironies climate change presents, the Three Gorges dam — contentious since it was first built, displacing more than a million people — was threatened last summer by too much rain. Even as they acknowledge its problems, Chinese officials continue to assert that the dam's electricity-generation justifies its environmental effects. 

This is what economic growth without environmental regulation looks like. And apparently it's what the U.S. Republican Party, which continues to lobby aggressively to hamstring the EPA, would like to see in this country. 

To address its current drought, China is proposing to divert water from the Yangtze River to the north (which the New York Times' report compares to "channeling water from the Mississippi River to meet the drinking needs of Boston, New York and Washington") and forcibly relocate 350,000 peasants who depend on its waters to cities.

April was a cruel month in the United States — and the pain has continued into May. A record-breaking spate of 600 tornadoes ravaged much of the Midwest and South, killing 250 people and sending scores of thousands to emergency shelters. The same storms that fueled the twisters contributed to near-record floods along the Mississippi and feeder rivers.

Earlier this month, the Army Corps of Engineers made a controversial decision to dynamite a levee at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to save the tiny town of Cairo, Ill., and ease flooding upstream. The move came at the cost of 90 houses and 100,000 acres of crops, for which the federal government will have to reimburse farmers. Hundreds of people have had to flee their homes in Memphis, Tenn., and Louisiana. 

The media has attempted levelheaded dissections of whether these natural disasters were or were not caused by climate change. But as Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research has argued, questioning whether isolated incidents were or were not caused by climate change misses the point: The climate is changing, and all weather events occur in the context of its increased variability. 

In 2010, FEMA declared a record 81 disasters, nearly tripling its 60-year average of 33. More than 380 people died and 1,700 were injured as a result of extreme weather events last year.

So, how will we cope with the spike in disasters? The answer is twofold: Do what we can to stop climate change from getting even worse, and — because we’ve already missed our chance to stop it altogether — invest in disaster risk reduction and preparedness plans. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said just last week that “No development effort will be equitable or sustainable unless disaster and climate risk measures are a part of the picture.”

Local Governments for Sustainability, also called ICLEI, points to some ways to blunt the effects of the changing climate without contributing to its causes. To protect the sick, the young and the elderly from heat waves, for example, cities will need to provide cooling centers. These centers should use natural cooling systems such as trees to create shade wherever possible and run air conditioners on renewable energy from distributed power generation sources to reduce the chances of a blackout.

Of course, to get people to cooling centers or high-water shelters, we will need effective early warning systems. Yet few U.S. cities — much less cities in the developing world — have this cheap, essential program in place.

According to a 2010 Trust for America’s Health report, just 14 states earn scores of 9 or 10 out of 10 for their readiness to handle emergencies, including disease, disaster and bioterrorism. Instead of spending more to improve preparedness, most states and the federal government are cutting public health funding. 

But just as the Army Corps of Engineers is scrambling to manage levees on the Mississippi and FEMA has stepped in to help tornado and flood victims, when the extreme weather hits, we pay one way or another. A new report by the American Security Project shows systematically that it will cost more to address extreme weather events in such chaotic, ad-hoc ways than it will to start planning for changed weather patterns — and the mortality, injuries and ill health they bring with them — immediately. As the Secretary General pointed out, risk reduction planning is not a matter of spending more, but of using resources more wisely, such as early warning systems, public education and efficient land use planning.

A key part of our work at the Center for Public Health & Climate Change is to ensure that policymakers remember that human health ought to be the heart and soul of risk reduction and climate adaptation plans.

To learn more about preparing yourself as an individual for extreme weather events, both the American Public Health Association and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provide helpful information.