Newest IPCC report sees climate change causing food shortages, violent conflict

Climate change will, as many expect, cause pain and suffering on a large scale, with hundreds of millions of people displaced, wars, and the erasure of trillions of dollars from the world economy. That’s the conclusion of a new report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to a report published Monday by The Independent who saw a leaked copy.

The IPCC is the leading science panel collecting evidence from thousands of peer-reviewed studies about climate change. The new report, which was due to be made public next month, was leaked to The Independent.

According to the report, human society around the world will experience enormous strain, with people around the world forced to migrate. The situation is expected to lead to more violent conflict around the world, and is expected to hit Asia the hardest.

Food shortages are predicted, because crop yields should decrease by 2% per decade for the rest of the century, while population is expected to increase. This should result in more malnutrition, and conflicts over food.

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Increasing numbers of intense heatwaves are expected to produce more fires, and also impact crop yields.

Coastal areas will flood, both from storm surges as happened when hurricanes hit New York City recently, and thanks to rising sea level due to melting glaciers. Those living on the coast must then migrate elsewhere.

Fresh water systems in many areas are expected to dry up, exacerbating an already tight competition for water. Is the water emergency recently declared in California a precursor to this effect? This is also expected to drive some freshwater fish species to extinction.

Many in the environmental community have talked about the potential for these results for years. The Transition Town movement was founded largely because of these kinds of dire scenarios. What’s new is to have validation of these predictions from a major scientific panel like the IPCC.

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About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.