Global Warming 2

Environment

SATURDAY, MAY 30, 2009 03:30 PDT

Deadly heat

A controversial report from Kofi Annan's group says global warming is killing hundreds of thousands a year.

BY KATHARINE MIESZKOWSKI

Reuters/Paulo Whitaker/Files

Residents paddle their boat in a street flooded by the Mearim river in Trizidela do Vale, in the northeastern state of Maranhao, Brazil, in this May 13, 2009 file photo. A bout of extreme weather, including floods in the north and drought in the south, has reignited the debate about how climate change is affecting Latin America's largest country, home to the world's biggest rain forest and one of the world's bread baskets.

Climate change is currently killing 300,000 people a year around the world, while seriously impacting the lives of hundreds of millions more, states a controversial new report from the Global Humanitarian Forum in Geneva. The report, "Human Impact Report: Climate Change -- The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis," predicts that by 2030, approximately 500,000 people will lose their lives to global warming annually. Even today, it charges that 325 million people are seriously affected by climate change, at a total economic cost of $125 billion a year.

"Climate change is a silent human crisis. Yet it is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time," said Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations, who is now the president of the Global Humanitarian Forum, in a statement. "Already today it causes suffering to hundreds of millions of people, most of whom are not even aware that they are victims of climate change. We need an international agreement to contain climate change and reduce its widespread suffering."