World Bank chief warns of global warming impact

WASHINGTON (AP) The World Bank's new president says that he intends to make the impact of global warming on the poor a major theme of his work at the lending institution.

Jim Yong Kim was speaking to reporters ahead of the World Bank's annual meeting in Tokyo this month. He said that rising food prices and the recent drought in many parts of the world could be directly linked to manmade global warming. He said: "It's one of the issues that I am going to be very vocal about."

Kim said Thursday that poverty reduction should be the bank's primary focus. But he worries that global warming could shrink the world's arable land and hamper efforts to reduce poverty.

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"After Al Gore came back from Kyoto, President Clinton tried to sell it to the American people," says Ed Maibach, director of George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication. "In this case, Republicans fear that the kinds of solutions being prescribed are essentially going to grow the government and increase government intrusion into their lives, and that actually may well be the case."