It's difficult to lift yourself up with your bootstraps if you don't have any bootstraps or they're under water. As an American or European it's hard to understand or imagine what it's like to live on under $2 per day though millions upon millions in world do precisely that. When I look at the billions blown on Wall Street or the black hole of spending in Iraq, I wonder why it's so difficult for wealthy nations to step up and help those who are in need, at home or abroad. The people that I've met in poor communities work just as hard as anyone else, but are often stuck due to circumstances well beyond their control.
Without the money, the panel found, a warmer world "could stall and then reverse human development" in the countries where 2.6 billion people live on $2 a day or less.
Scientists have reported that temperatures rose an average 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years, bringing the prospect of a century of extreme weather, rising seas, widening drought and disease and harm to fisheries, forests and farmland.
According to development officials, the unfortunate consequences include women and young girls walking further to collect water in the Horn of Africa, people erecting bamboo flood shelters on stilts in the delta of the Ganges River, and others planting mangroves to protect themselves against storm surges in the delta of the Mekong River.
"These impacts ... go unnoticed in financial markets and in the measurement of world gross domestic product (GDP)," the panel's report said. "But increased exposure to drought, to more intense storms, to floods and environmental stress is holding back the efforts of the world's poor to build a better life for themselves and their children."
