UK Report: Unchecked Warming Could Lead to 'Extended World War'

clipped from news.yahoo.com If we don't deal with climate change decisively, "what we're talking about then is extended world war," the eminent economist said. His audience Saturday, small and elite, had been stranded here by bad weather and were talking climate. They couldn't do much about the one, but the other was squarely in their hands. And so, Lord Nicholas Stern was telling them, was the potential for mass migrations setting off mass conflict. "Somehow we have to explain to people just how worrying that is," the British economic thinker said.

The article goes on:

Stern, author of a major British government report detailing the cost of climate change, was one of a select group of two dozen — environment ministers, climate negotiators and experts from 16 nations — scheduled to fly to Antarctica to learn firsthand how global warming might melt its ice into the sea, raising ocean levels worldwide.

Stern says that nations must come together and achieve zero-carbon energy production by 2050 by abandoning fossil fuels altogether. A tough haul, but by no means impossible. He also called for investments in green jobs.

"The unemployed builders of Europe should be insulating all the houses of Europe," he said.