A mother and son sit in the tents that serve as their home in an illegally occupied shantytown outside Lima, Peru. The Red Cross warns that overpopulation and poverty will continue to create global disasters. The Red Cross today said that last year's natural disasters were the most damaging on record and predicted catastrophes would become more widespread and devastating as climate change takes hold.
Climate change is no longer a doomsday prophecy, it's a reality.
Peter Walker, director of the organization's disaster policy department, said climate change, combined with poverty, would have an effect on natural disasters over the next two decades. Countries that have not had a major disaster in living memory will start having them. Those that have had one or two a year will have more. He said sea levels were expected to rise over the next generation, putting highly populated coastal areas more at risk of flooding. Even highly industrialized countries could not face the cost of protecting themselves, let alone Bangladesh, China and Egypt.