Global Warming Will Cause Most Damage In Emerging Markets

From AllAfrica.com:

“The next disaster awaiting the continent would come as a result of global warming, another product of the West. There is a consensus that the continent will be one of the worst hit. In its latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that ‘Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and climate variability, a situation aggravated by the interaction of 'multiple stresses', occurring at various levels, and low adaptive capacity.’ Scientists are forecasting a doom of acute food and water shortages, war, floods, etc. The most pathetic thing is both people and governments of Africa are neither prepared for it nor do they possess the adaptive capacity to endure the situation. ‘African farmers have developed several adaptation options to cope with current climate variability, but such adaptations may not be sufficient for future changes of climate’, the IPCC report said. Over 75% of Africans live on subsistence farming, something that will be impossible in most part of the continent when temperature rise reaches 20C by 2050.”

From MSNBC:

“Scientists predict that all the glaciers in the tropical Andes will disappear by mid-century. The implications are dire not just for La Paz-El Alto but also for Quito, Ecuador, and Bogota, Colombia. More than 11 million people now live in the burgeoning cities, and El Alto alone is expanding at 5 percent a year.

The melting of the glaciers threatens not just drinking water but also crops and the hydroelectric plants on which these cities rely. The affected countries will need hundreds of millions of dollars to build reservoirs, shore up leaky distribution networks and construct gas or oil-fired plants — money they simply don't have.

‘We're the ones who've contributed the least to global warming and we're getting hit with the biggest bill,’ laments Edson Ramirez, a Bolivian hydrologist who coordinates U.N., French- and Japanese-sponsored projects to quantify the damage exacted on fragile Andes ecosystems by richer nations that use more fossil fuel and thus produce more greenhouse gas emissions.”

From TimesOnline:

“A report issued yesterday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) described how a warming world would threaten billions of people with thirst and malnutrition, endanger more than half of wildlife species with extinction and initiate a melting of the Greenland ice cap that could raise global sea levels by more than 22ft.”