"Development and Climate Change": Without Comment

Source: Rosina M. Bierbaum and Robert B. Zoellick, Science, 6 November 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5954, p. 771

"No country is immune to climate change, but the developing world will bear the brunt of the effects, including some 75 to 80% of the costs of anticipated damages.* Millions in densely populated coastal areas and in island nations will lose their homes as the sea level rises, while poor people will face crop failures, reduced agricultural productivity, and increased hunger, malnutrition, and disease. Extreme events such as droughts, floods, and forest fires will become more frequent, making it even harder for developing countries to attain the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals of 2015. A "climate-smart" world is possible in our time. But to ensure a safe and sustainable future, all nations must act now, act together, and act differently."

Comment: Many years ago I organized a panel at the National Academy of Sciences to discuss the health impact of global climate change. I was dismayed to see the lack of understanding of the problem among epidemiologists and scientists who were gathered for the meeting. They were looking at excess mortality during heat waves in developed countries as models, or at the changing distribution of the vectors of insect born diseases. Those of course should be considered.

The more important impacts, in my opinion, are likely to be indirect effects of massive changes in the way people live, such as the disruption caused by loss of seaside residences and changing patterns of agriculture, not to mention mass migration and conflict over newly scarce resources.

Now there are about 56,000,000 deaths per year worldwide and as the population increases that number may well increase even if there were to be some miraculous solution to global warming. If global warming increased the death rate by one percent, that would be more than half a million deaths per year. Is that a likely scenario? I doubt if anyone really knows. JAD