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Sources: World Bank; U.
Number of newborn babies. Projection under one-child policy. Second child. First child.
Fertility rate by country Replacement level fertility. Source: The World Factbook, U. Central Intelligence Agency. Female population.
More than 30 million women will be older than 84 years old by Source: United Nations Population Division, More than 64 years old. Working age. Younger than 15 years old. Children across the nation are reported to be fearful that their school could be next. In the face of these tragedies, it is crucial for adults to be able to speak to, comfort, and console children who may be traumatized by news reports.
The study findings will help to see if there is evidence that health impacts on children and their families are getting better, worse, or staying the same as years go by. Our field team is currently interviewing in five communities in Louisiana. For more information on the RCYC study, click here.
In , those figures will be 7. Of the nearly 3 billion people the world will add in the next 50 years, South Asia and Africa will each account for roughly 1 billion. The concentration of population growth in less developed regions means that an increasing number of people live in countries with the least ability to adapt to climate change. The range of measures that could be needed to mitigate the impacts of climate change run the gamut: air conditioner purchases, changes in agricultural practices, construction of houses on stilts, relocation programs, development of storm and flood early warning systems, and replenishment of eroded beaches, to name just a few.
Besides lacking the financial resources to undertake many of these measures, many less developed countries also lack the scientific expertise, effective public institutions, infrastructure, and technology needed to make adaptation measures work. Bangladesh provides a dramatic example of this problem. The Ganges-Brahmaputra river delta in particular is one of the most densely populated areas in the world.
Yet this delta, which occupies much of southern Bangladesh, is also tremendously vulnerable to climate change.
The impact of rising sea levels could be disastrous, causing extensive flooding and erosion as well as salinization of agricultural land and freshwater supplies. According to the UN Environment Programme, a centimeter rise in sea levels could displace more than 30 million people. To be sure, while the residents of industrialized countries may not be as hard hit as those of less developed countries, climate change would not leave the more developed world unscathed.
In the United States, for example, parts of southern Florida and Louisiana would be submerged by a one-meter rise in sea level. And there could be unwelcome indirect effects as well. If less developed countries are disproportionately hurt by climate change, the political backlash against industrialized countries that are leading carbon-emitters particularly the United States could be considerable. Less developed countries are already making a variety of demands for compensation, a movement likely to gather strength as climate change continues and its effects are felt more strongly.
While certain aspects of climate change could prove beneficial to some communities, the most obvious silver lining — warmer winters at colder latitudes — will not help most people in the less developed world.
Document pdf 2. The Plan of Action also committed to cooperate in the development, strengthening and implementation of regional disaster mitigation plans, including contingency and response arrangements. Furthermore, social capital and social networks increase the propensity to evacuate and facilitate relocation and recovery Airriess et al. Less than two years later, in September , before recovering fully from Matthew, the city was devastated by Hurricane Florence. This presentation will summarize the ongoing multidisciplinary research, as well as some findings from the field investigations.
Given this prospect, the tasks of preventing future climate change and identifying inexpensive means of adapting to it appear all the more pressing. Certain gases in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide and water vapor, absorb and re-emit this energy, which slows the process of releasing the solar energy back into space. This natural trapping of heat keeps the planet surface warmer than it would otherwise be, making it more hospitable to life.
The Industrial Revolution, particularly the widespread use of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, has led to the release of enormous amounts of heat-absorbing gases into the atmosphere. The four greenhouse gases whose atmospheric concentrations are most influenced by human activities are. Global emissions of carbon dioxide from human activities have increased more than fold, from million to billion metric tons between and , according to the U. As a result, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen substantially over the past two centuries.
The implications of rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have received a great deal of scientific attention over the past decade. In response to a request from the Bush administration, an expert panel at the U. The U.