The signs are overwhelming(courtesy of Barreto, Beobachter Edelweis):
54% increase in number of people affected by climate
disasters by 2015 could overwhelm emergency
responses
21 April 2009
Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director Oxfam International -
http://www.oxfam.org
"In six years time the number of people affected by climatic crises is projected to rise by 54 per cent to 375 million people, threatening to overwhelm the humanitarian aid system, said international agency Oxfam today.
The projected rise is due to a combination of entrenched poverty and people migrating to densely populated slums which are prone to the increasing number of climatic events. This is compounded by the political failure to address these risks and a humanitarian system which is not fit for purpose. In its report, The Right to Survive, Oxfam says the world needs to re-engineer the way it responds to, prepare for and prevents disasters.
Oxfam used the best-available data of 6,500 climate-related disasters since 1980 to project that the number of people affected by climatic disaster will rise by 133 million to 375 million people a year on average by 2015. This does not include people hit by other disasters such as wars, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
The world needs to increase its humanitarian aid spending from 2006 levels of $14.2 billion to at least $25 billion a year just to deal with these rising numbers of people. Even this increase in money – the equivalent of only $50 per affected person – is still woefully inadequate to meet their basic needs."
[...]
http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pr...mate-disasters
Wake up! Stand up, Earth Humans!
Salome.