How the rich can save the poor and themselves: lessons from the global warming

Paul R. and Anne H. Ehrlich delivered this special address during the International Conference on Global Warming and Climate Change: Perspectives from developing countries, which took place 21-23 February 1989 in New Delhi.

ABSTRACT: Humanity faces an imposing array of environmental problems on a worldwide scale, including catastrophic loss of biotic diversity (especially because of deforestation in the moist tropics), depletion of the ozone layer, acid precipitation, toxification of the entire planet, a growing vulnerability to epidemic diseases such as AIDS, and so on (Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 1987). No problem is more daunting, though, than the gradual warming of Earth’s surface because of the injection of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And none so clearly shows the interrelationships among all major environmental problems or so plainly demands the attention and cooperation of all nations in order to ameliorate its effects. Although this paper focuses mostly on the problem of global warming, a similar paper could be written based on any of the others.

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