Climate Change Costs: 25 Million More Starving Children by 2050
Conservatives love to whine about perceived costs of climate legislation, but they’re clearly more worried about their own bottom lines than about the true costs of catastrophic climate change. A new report issued by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) states that the world will have 25 million more starving children by the year 2050 as climate change causes food shortages and soaring food costs.
From The Guardian:
The grim scenario is the first to gauge the effects of climate change on the world’s food supply by combining climate and agricultural models.
“The food price crisis of last year really was a wake-up call to a lot of people that we are going to have 50% more people on the surface of the Earth by 2050,” said Gerald Nelson, the lead author of the report. “Meeting those demands for food coming out of population growth is going to be a huge challenge – even without climate change.”
After several years in which development aid has been diverted away from rural areas, the report called for $7bn a year for crop research, and investment in irrigation and rural infrastructure to help farmers adjust to a warming climate. “Continuing the business-as-usual approach will almost certainly guarantee disastrous consequences,” said Nelson.
The G20 industrialised nations last week began discussing how to invest some $20bn pledged for food security earlier this year.
Some regions of the world outlined in the report are already showing signs of vulnerability because of changing rainfall patterns and drought linked to climate change.
And this is the great irony about religious conservatives in particular: they’re so worked up over abortion, yet they don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about the people who already live on our planet. Twenty five million starving children in addition to the millions that already exist – now that’s something to be angry about.
Link The Guardian
Photo credit: MiaFarrow.org
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This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 11:00 am and is filed under Consciousness, Green Living, Health, Science, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
