Deliberacy

According to a report written by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to be presented at a Meeting in Belgium in early April, these are some changes we should expect to see in our world over the next several decades.

• Hundreds of millions of Africans and tens of millions of Latin Americans who now have water will be short of it in less than 20 years. By 2050, more than 1 billion people in Asia could face water shortages. By 2080, water shortages could threaten 1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people, depending on the level of greenhouse gases that cars and industry spew into the air.
• Smog in U.S. cities will worsen and “ozone-related deaths from climate (will) increase by approximately 4.5 percent for the mid-2050s, compared with 1990s levels,” turning a small health risk into a substantial one.
• Death rates for the world’s poor from global warming-related illnesses, such as malnutrition and diarrhea, will rise by 2030. Malaria and dengue fever, as well as illnesses from eating contaminated shellfish, are likely to grow.
• By 2080, between 200 million and 600 million people could be hungry because of global warming’s effects.
• About 100 million people each year could be flooded by 2080 by rising seas.

The good news, according to scientists who authored the report: many, but not all, of these outcomes can still be prevented. But only if the world reduces carbon dioxide emissions and if the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere stabilizes. If those efforts are successful, “most major impacts on human welfare would be avoided; but some major impacts on ecosystems are still likely to occur.”