Poor People Cannot Cope with Temperature Rise, Warns Christian Aid

Christian Aid's senior climate analyst, Andrew Pendleton, has responded to the release of a new climate change report with a warning that poor people will not be able to cope with a rise in temperatures of more than three degrees centigrade.

|QUOTE|The climate change report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) at the end of last week predicted a rise in temperatures by two degrees to 4.5 degrees centigrade.

But Mr Pendleton warned, "Poor people will not be able to cope with a three degree centigrade temperature increase by the end of the century."

He said, "It would mean that millions of people in the developing world would be forced to abandon their farm land as climate change turns their once-fertile plots into desert."

Meanwhile, the IPCC report also predicted a rise in sea levels by the century's end from 28 to 58 centimetres above 1999 levels globally.

Mr Pendleton warned that the high level of migration off the land and the loss of coastal cities to rising sea levels "will transform our planet in ways hard to imagine".

He warned: "The 0.8 degrees centigrade rise we have seen during the past century is already bringing hunger, destitution and death to millions of the world's most vulnerable people."

Mr Pendleton called for urgent action to keep any increase in temperature to within two degrees centigrade.

"We have to commit now to staying within a temperature increase of two degrees centigrade. The IPCC's report makes having a global agreement on climate change not just an option but an absolute necessity.

"There is simply no time to lose. We must now work out how much each country can emit and cap their emissions.

"It can be done. We have the technology. We can't afford to waste any more time."