George Monbiot: "If We Don’t Deal With Climate Change We Condemn Hundreds of Millions of People to Death"

Every week seems to bring new warnings on the consequences of rising global temperatures caused by human activity. A new report from the British charity Christian Aid predicts global warming will create up to one billion refugees by the year 2050. The World Health Organization recently said it expects deaths and injuries from climate change to more than double in the next twenty-five years. The yearly death toll linked to weather patterns is forecast to top 300,000 by the year 2030.

The U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declared earlier this year the warming of the earth's climate system in unequivocal and attributable to human activities. The panel has called for humans to make sweeping cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 50 years to keep global warming in check.

The Bush administration's stance is well known. President Bush laid out his opposition to the Kyoto accords in his first State of the Union address in 2001.

Global warming is being pushed as a major issue for next month's gathering of world leaders at the G8 summit in Germany. The Washington Post reported this week the Bush administration is trying to weaken the proposed climate change declaration. U .S. negotiators want to delete a pledge to limit the global temperature rise and cut emissions of greenhouse gas to half 1990 levels. The administration also wants to strike language that designates the U.N. as the appropriate forum for negotiating action on climate change.

Our next guest has done a detailed study into what it would practically take to heed the warnings on climate change and reduce our emissions of greenhouse gas. George Monbiot is a widely-read columnist for the Guardian of London and a leading British campaigner for the environment. His latest book is called “Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning.”

* George Monbiot, columnist for the London Guardian. His new book is "Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning."

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