• The International Red Cross Disaster Report tells us that the number of people affected by natural disasters has risen from 275,000 in the 1970s to 18 million in the 1990s.
• The organisation reports that 5,000 new environmental refugees are created each day.
• According to the World Glacial Authority, the Greenland ice sheet is shrinking by 11 cubic miles each year.
• 79 of the 88 glaciers it has studied are retreating, threatening the 100 million people who live in areas below sea level.
• The Gobi Desert is growing by 10,000 sq km per year, according to the Chinese government
• The UN state that 250 million acres of food growing land are being lost each year to global warming.
• Sir Nicholas Stern claims that a temperature rise of more than 2°C will result in the whole of Africa being scorched, while Bangladesh will disappear under the sea.

The nightmare scenario is:

• The first to be affected by resource starvation, developing country economies would be forced by water and food shortages to stop exporting and create survival economies.
• Western nations, dependent on manufacturing capacity and raw materials from the developing world, see the end of the era of cheap goods.
• The end of cheap imports will also expose the debt weaknesses of western economies, whose consumers buy more than they produce.
• An energy crisis caused by global warming and the finite amount of fossil fuel would also hit energy dependant western nations.
• Agricultural and industrial areas that lie below sea level would be swamped, destroying economic activity.
• At the same time environmental refugees place increasing strain on existing resources and economies.
• Famine and disease caused by water and food shortages will increase in intensity by 60 per cent.
• As Sir Nicholas Stern reported, reducing carbon emissions now will cost one per cent of GDP, or £184 billion. Failure to do so would cost the global economy between 5 to 20 per cent of GDP

• Will the poor have to fight the rich for water and food?
• Will economies collapse?
• Will health, hygiene and safety be distant memories?
• Will vast numbers of species simply disappear forever?