Global warming: World's poor most 'vulnerable'

[stephanie]

Global warming: World's poor most 'vulnerable'
27 Nov 2007, 2111 hrs IST,AP
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UNITED NATIONS: Floods, droughts and other climate disasters will rob millions of children of the decent meals and schools they need unless rich nations provide $86 billion (euro57.9 billion) by 2015 to help the poor adapt to global warming, an expert panel warned on Tuesday.

The US government needs to cover $40 billion (euro26.95 billion) of that spending, which will "strengthen the capacity of vulnerable people" to cope with climate-related risks, says the report commissioned by the UN Development Program.

The nearly 400-page Human Development Report comes just a week before the world's nations convene in Indonesia to negotiate a new climate treaty. It adds a dire economic perspective to previous UN scientific findings that carbon and other heat-trapping "greenhouse gas" emissions must stabilize by 2015 and then decline.

Without the money, the panel found, a warmer world "could stall and then reverse human development" in the countries where 2.6 billion people live on US$2 (euro1.35) a day or less.

Developed countries, meanwhile, are failing to meet their targets under the current climate treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, for cutting greenhouse gases by 2012, the report said. France, Germany, Japan and Britain have reduced their emissions somewhat, it said, but the European Union is falling short of its goal of a 20 percent cut by 2020.

"To say that the industrialized countries aren't meeting their Kyoto targets -- that remains to be seen,'' said Annie Petsonk, a lawyer for the advocacy group Environmental Defense. "The targets only take effect for the years 2008 to 2012. The countries are getting ready for them.''

Petsonk said developing nations' carbon-trading markets have the potential to generate large flows of private capital that could help provide much of the development money the U.N. recommends is needed to help the poor adapt to global warming.

Scientists have reported that temperatures rose an average 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years, bringing the prospect of a century of extreme weather, rising seas, widening drought and disease and harm to fisheries, forests and farmland.

According to development officials, the unfortunate consequences include women and young girls having to walk further to collect water in the Horn of Africa, people erecting bamboo flood shelters on stilts in the delta of the Ganges River, and others planting mangroves to protect themselves against storm surges in the delta of the Mekong River.

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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/G...ow/2576201.cms

[Psychoblues]

How do you feel about it, Stephanie?

[stephanie]

[Psychoblues]

Have you ever considered running for political office?

We have one in the White house every bit as lame as you and some 18% of Americans still LOVE HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[PostmodernProphet]

well shucks, Psycho...I think that one of the Democratic candidates thinks a lot like you do......and he can't even get 18% of the Democrats to love him.....

[Psychoblues]

Point taken, Pmp, even if it was inappropriate to the conversation.

well shucks, Psycho...I think that one of the Democratic candidates thinks a lot like you do......and he can't even get 18% of the Democrats to love him.....

We'll see what shakes down through the primaries.

[Dustin]

Obviously the worlds poor are most at risk, esp the people in low lieing areas. That's nothing new.