Climate change risks must be treated as seriously as nuclear weapons threat, warns new report
CLIMATE change risks unprecedented food price spikes, conflicts and migration on a scale never seen before, an international report has warned.
In a foreword to the climate change risk assessment, Foreign Minister Baroness Anelay said that people have often treated global warming as an “issue of prediction, as if it were a long-term weather forecast”, or as purely a question of economics.
Instead, she said, climate change has to be addressed in the same comprehensive way as dealing with stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.
The independent report, commissioned by the Foreign Office and led by the UK Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change Sir David King, outlined direct dangers of a warming world – particularly if the world fails to keep temperature rises to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels.
These include deadly heat stress, the risk of significant flooding for coastal cities such as New York and Shanghai becoming many times higher, reductions in crop yields of up to 75 per cent for rice if temperatures rise by 4-5C, water shortages and drought. The study also sets out the “systemic risks” of climate change, warning the greatest threats of rising temperatures came from the interaction of climate impacts with human systems such global food markets, how countries are run and international security.
A “plausible worst-case scenario” for global food production and markets could lead to unprecedented price spikes on the global market, with some grains seeing a trebling of prices compared to current levels, the report said.
Baroness Anelay said: “When we think about keeping our country safe, we always consider the worst case scenarios.
“That is what guides our policies on nuclear non-proliferation, counter-terrorism, and conflict prevention. We have to think about climate change the same way.
“Unlike those more familiar risks, the risks of climate change will increase continually over time – until we have entirely eliminated their cause. To manage these risks successfully, it is essential we take a long-term view.”