Paying the Price for Climate Change

It didn't make for a jolly read:

Floods, food and water shortages, threats to human health: Those are just some of the consequences of GLOBAL climate change, according to according a report published Monday by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Scientists and officials meeting in Japan say the document is the most comprehensive assessment to date of the impacts of climate change on the world.

And their gloomy outlook is all because we continue to burn so many fossil fuels- coal, gas, oil - to meet our energy needs, pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

So what are the economic consequences?

Well the report concludes that if the world's average temperature increases by 2 degrees celsius from recent levels, then global economic output will shrink by between 0.2 and 2.0 percent a year.

But the effects will vary in different parts of the world.

In some scenarios there would be economic benefits for countries that get warmer and wetter and consequently more fertile agriculturally. Drier weather in other regions would result in sharply lower crop yields. Benjamin Fiafor is a radio broadcaster on Farm Radio in Ghana. He told us farmers where he is are already seeing mostly negative effects.