Poor Nations to Bear Brunt as World Warms

[WePurrsevere]

Source: NYT

The world’s richest countries, which have contributed by far the most to the atmospheric changes linked to global warming, are already spending billions of dollars to limit their own risks from its worst consequences, like drought and rising seas.

But despite longstanding treaty commitments to help poor countries deal with warming, these industrial powers are spending just tens of millions of dollars on ways to limit climate and coastal hazards in the world’s most vulnerable regions — most of them close to the equator and overwhelmingly poor.

Next Friday, a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that since 1990 has been assessing global warming, will underline this growing climate divide, according to scientists involved in writing it — with wealthy nations far from the equator not only experiencing fewer effects but also better able to withstand them

<snip>

“Like the sinking of the Titanic, catastrophes are not democratic,” said Henry I. Miller, a fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “A much higher fraction of passengers from the cheaper decks were lost. We’ll see the same phenomenon with global warming.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/science/earth/01climate.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

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It seems to me that the major contributor's to this mess have an obligation to help those poorer countries that will be the most harmed by our mess to get set up so they can survive as well as possible as things grown harsher for them. x(

[rodeodance]

1. seems to me you are right on----------

[AndyTiedye]

2. Like New Orleans Too. A Lot Like New Orleans

[XemaSab]

3. I'm really confused

I thought the more northern regions were more likely to see greater climate change effects. :shrug:

[krkaufman]

4. From the article...

wealthy nations are investing in windmill-powered plants that turn seawater to drinking water, in flood barriers and floatable homes, and in grains and soybeans genetically altered to flourish even in a drought.

In contrast, Africa accounts for less than 3 percent of the global emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel burning since 1900, yet its 840 million people face some of the biggest risks from drought and disrupted water supplies, according to new scientific assessments. As the oceans swell with water from melting ice sheets, it is the crowded river deltas in southern Asia and Egypt, along with small island nations, that are most at risk.

Scientists say it has become increasingly clear that worldwide precipitation is shifting away from the equator and toward the poles. That will nourish crops in warming regions like Canada and Siberia while parching countries — like Malawi in sub-Saharan Africa — which are already prone to drought.

etc.

Read the article for more.