It's very important that there should be cross-fertilisation between government and academia. Both parties can benefit from having a better understanding of how the other works.

Rising sea levels will result in tens to hundreds of millions more people flooded each year with a warming of 3 or 4°C. There will be serious risks and increasing pressures for coastal protection in South East Asia (Bangladesh and Vietnam), small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and large coastal cities, such as Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Calcutta, Karachi, Buenos Aires, St. Petersburg, New York, Miami and London.

What we are talking about is extended world war...People would move on a massive scale. Hundreds of millions, probably billions of people would have to move.

You'd see more floods like you've seen in Mozambique in 2000, you'd see more droughts like you saw in Kenya in the late 1990s, there would be a serious threat to the water flow down the Nile on which 10 countries depend.

Failing to curb the impact of climate change could damage the global economy on the scale of the Great Depression or the world wars by spawning environmental devastation that could cost 5 to 20 percent of the world's annual gross domestic product.

Do politicians understand just how difficult it could be, just how devastating rises of 4C, 5C or 6C could be? I think, not yet

To claim the World Bank is just an extension of US foreign policy is just wrong.