Not measurable in dollars

First victims of ecological ruin: the poor. ‘Climate change is becoming quite rapidly the central issue to do with poverty today”, Oxfam Australia’s chief, Andrew Hewett, told the Herald. “That also raises deep ethical dilemmas because the people least responsible for this crisis have the least resources to deal with it, and they are also those who are on the front line.” Hunger caused by climate change may be the defining human tragedy of this century, the [Oxfam] report argues, and if global warming is allowed to proceed unchecked the true cost “will not be measured in dollars but in millions or billions of lives.”‘