Billions face food shortages

The Guardian newspaper, on the 9th of January 2009, looks at a report that by 2100 billions of people will starve because of global warming.

Half of the world's population could face severe food shortages by the end of the century as rising temperatures take their toll on farmers' crops, scientists have warned.

"The stress on global food production from temperatures alone is going to be huge, and that doesn't take into account water supplies stressed by the higher temperatures," said David Battisti, at the University of Washington, who led the study.

"When we looked at our historical examples there were ways to address the problem within a given year," Naylor said. "People could always turn somewhere else to find food. But in the future there's not going to be any place to turn unless we rethink our food supplies."