The World Bank warned Sunday that if climate change isn’t stopped or slowed down, the global economy will suffer greatly.
The report, titled "Turn Down the Heat," envisions a world that is warmer by an average of 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit). According to Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, the report is meant to "shock [the world] into action."
"A 4 degree Celsius world is so different from the current one that it comes with high uncertainty and new risks that threaten our ability to anticipate and plan for future adaptation needs," he writes.
A global temperature increase like one estimated by the World Bank would lead to "the inundation of coastal cities; increasing risks for food production, potentially leading to higher malnutrition rates; many dry regions becoming dryer, wet regions wetter; unprecedented heat waves in many regions," water scarcity, and more natural disasters.
The organization chose to analyze a four-degree increase because that’s the worst-case scenario envisioned by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—and it could be a reality as early as 2060.
Though the report makes no specific financial estimates, it says a warming world would wreak havoc on farming, overload countries’ health systems, and would disproportionately affect the poor. It would push up food prices, make 35 percent of farmland in sub-Saharan Africa unsuitable for agriculture, and would extend the ranges of certain diseases.