More than 800 million people now live in areas predicted to become moderate-to-severe "hotspots", or affected areas, by 2050 under the carbon-intensive scenario, with India accounting for almost three-quarters of them, the report said. Moderate hotspots are areas where projected consumption spending declines by 4-8 percent and severe ones are where the drop exceeds 8 percent.
The World Bank's expectation of about half of India living in moderately or severely-affected areas by 2050 tallies with a federal think tank's report two weeks ago. This warned that 600 million Indians could suffer high to extreme water stress as the country faces the worst long-term water crisis in its history.
Rising temperature and changing monsoon rainfall patterns from climate change could cost India 2.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and depress the living standards of one in every two Indians by 2050, the World Bank report said. In terms of GDP per capita, it predicted changes in average weather would hit Bangladeshis living in severe hotspots the hardest among South Asians. It projected a 14.4 percent fall in income by 2050 for them. The comparative figures for Sri Lanka and India were 10.0 percent and 9.8 percent respectively under the carbon intensive scenario.
"Climate changes will impact you based on where you live and what you do," said Mani, who is also the main author of the report. Inland areas would be more affected than coastal areas and mountainous regions, and the most vulnerable would be those dependent on agriculture as their main livelihood, he added.
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Any climate information coming from national or international agencies is falsely optimistic because they cannot accept that we have already passed "the point of no- return". A way back in 2002 10 Nobel laureate scientists, including David Suzuki, sent out a statement that in 10 years (2012), subject to no massive change, we would pass the point of no-return -- and it was immediately censored -- by some of the scientists and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
In the early 1960's a large consensus of scientists forecast that the "new" capitalist agricultural practices in Africa would lead to famines and (coincidentally) a similar number of scientists forecast that the widespread use of inorganic (new) chemicals, including for instance plastics, introduced into the environment -- 2000 each year -- would create an EPIDEMIC OF CANCER, again within 20 years.
Both forecasts were spot-on true. Apparently no wage-earning scientist wanted to lose their income by forecasting unpalatable facts indicating, perhaps, the end of the world.
Just this year, 2018, it has been documented that insects, by far the largest most numerous category of life, had (by weight) LOST 90% of its mass. This was WORLD-WIDE. After years of documentation we can't even ban the pesticides killing domestic bees. Ninety percent loss of mass; there goes the pollination of plant life.
And everyone knows that a species that over-breeds reaches a point that destroys the environment that sustains it. Homo sapiens anyone? India is not alone.
[For documentation of some of these facts, see The WESTERN SOCIALIST, Spring-Summer, 1977, Prophecy of Suicide, "Tears Are Not Enough." (A pamphlet containing this text is available free from iwi@inciteWorldinsight.org.)]
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