The “silent crisis” known as global warming already kills 300,000 people per year, and that number will double in just 2 decades, according to a report by the Global Humanitarian Forum.

The “Human Impact Report: Climate Change”  was released in anticipation of a meeting  of the United Nations Climate Conference to be held next winter.

The purpose of that conference will be to develop a post-Kyoto climate agreement.

“We are trying to get the world’s attention…climate change is not something waiting to happen. It is impacting seriously the lives of many people around the world,” Forum president Kofi Annan told CNN.

“This threat to our health…to food production… to security…raises political tensions. It will have people on the move — and they are on the move — and many more which will bring tensions,” Annan added.

The report states that the Earth’s atmosphere warmed 1.33 degrees Fahrenheit between 1906 and 2005. Most of the jump transpired in recent decades.

It projects that by the turn of the next century, the Earth’s atmospheric temperatures will jump a minimum of an additional 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, “no matter what.”

“The suffering documented in this report is only the beginning.” The minimally expected rise, concluded the report, “would be catastrophic.”

Nearly all, 99%, of the 300,000 lives lost each year due to climate change are located in developing countries, which collectively produce about 1% of the world’s carbon emissions. Climate-related deaths due to malnutrition, diarrheal illnesses and malaria dwarf all other weather-related deaths.

The countries most vulnerable to global warming lie in a semi-arid belt extending from the Sahara/Sahel to the Middle East and Central Asia, as well as those in Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Arctic.

Australia was cited as the most vulnerable among first-world nations. It is already experiencing the worst 15-year drought in recorded history.

The report says developed countries need to contribute 100 times more funds than they currently devote to help developing nations fight the scourge.

Annan implored nations attending next winter’s meeting to reach a “global, effective, fair and binding” accord on climate change. Those talks could “well be the last chance for avoiding global catastrophe,” he told CNN.

Continuing its remarkable transformation into a force for positive change in America’s Rube Goldberg health care system, Wal-Mart announced last week that it supports legislation requiring employers to provide health insurance for their workers.

The so-called employer mandate has been a centerpiece of the Big O’s plans to provide health insurance for nearly all Americans.

“We are for an employer mandate which is fair and broad in its coverage,” said Wal-Mart Chief Exec Mike Duke in a letter to the Coronated One.

Wal-Mart’s current stance represents a hard-to-believe metamorphosis from just a few years ago, when its reputation was sullied and its stock price pummeled by repeated run-ins with organized labor.

The letter was co-signed by Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, and John Podesta, who ran the Obama transition team and is now chief executive of the lefty think tank, Center for American Progress.

Wal-Mart has, in fact, already put its money where its mouth is. Only 5.5% of its employees lack health insurance. That compares favorably with the national rate of uninsured employees, which stands at 18%.

Support from the retail giant flies in the face of most other companies that have spoken publicly about the matter. Even the Chamber of Commerce opposes the mandate, claiming it would lead to lay-offs, wage cuts and a wave of bankruptcies.

And Neil Trautwein, a VP for the National Retail Federation said he was “flabbergasted” by Wal-Mart’s insolence. The mandate is “the single most destructive thing you could do to the health-care system shy of a single-payer system.”