From a Google Image Search - The Economist
Immigration may often be a result of bad leaders, violence, gangs, war, and poverty but we are about to experience people who are forced to migrate by the changes in their climate. They may find themselves in a “hot spot” where temperatures reach heights that don’t support human life. Temperatures could theoretically get too cold to support human life, but that is not what is happening right now.
With the polar ice caps melting there is clear evidence that our atmosphere is heating up.
Some nations might find that their farmers and ranchers can no longer grow enough food to feed everyone. Precipitation patterns are changing. Rain does not fall in places where it used to be plentiful or at least adequate. This is happening in some African nations right now and in some South American nations like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
Snows are not as deep, so snow melt is not filling rivers and lakes to the usual depth, or at all. There are epic droughts. Parts of the world are burning as we see in the American Southwest, in California and up the Pacific Coast, in Australia, and even in Europe this year. Some locations get inundated with rain that falls faster than it can be absorbed so flooding occurs. Kentucky is experiencing this tragedy right now.
Many nations already had problems with food scarcity which are being exacerbated by climate change. Add war into the equation, and a pandemic--man-made interruptions to the supply chain that moves food around the globe, these are things that increase the migrations of people; people walking, traveling across waters in dangerous vessels, living in tent cities, people dying.
When people migrated in past eras, there was unclaimed land those who had to relocate could claim. This is no longer the case. Almost every inch of the earth is claimed by a nation or a person. If you are displaced in one American state or town, you can move without migrating as there are no impermeable borders between American states, yet. There are other places where it is possible to enter without being considered a migrant or an immigrant, but it may also depend on who wants to come in.
However, when many displaced populations try to migrate across national boundaries, they find they are unwelcome. Further movement is met with resistance, sometimes even violent resistance. America’s southern border is one such place. Hungary has a hard border. It helps Orbán stay in power. In fact, many nations choosing authoritarian leaders do so based on the leaders promises to block immigration.
This is especially true when people try to migrate from a poor nation to a richer nation, from a nation with a different skin color, or religion, or language from the nation they are trying to seek asylum in, or begin a new life in. Although most pollution comes from rich nations, poorer nations, some with good growing conditions, some already at the edges of sustainability, are affected most by climate change. You would think we would take in migrants from developing nations to atone for our sins. We have known the effects of excess C02 for decades. However, increasingly we take refuge in nationalism to defend our inhumane behaviors.
Poland opened its borders quite easily to Ukrainians because these two nations have lived side-by-side for centuries and the cultures are very similar. Still, the Polish people have expressed some shock at the difficulties of dealing with so many people coming over the border all at once. People from India were reluctantly accepted in Britain because they were bonded by imperialism to the old British Empire. Indians have proven to be an asset, good at business and successful at universities and in their careers. But when Syrians wanted to come into England, this was met with more resistance. In fact, blocking immigration seems to be a major reason for Brexit. Syrians who try to enter Balkan nations end up blocked by authoritarian leaders or in a refugee camp. It will get worse.
Nationalism and authoritarianism are connected. Citizens are choosing leaders who will close borders and keep immigrants/migrants out, thus keeping the nation’s “cultural identity safe from corruption.” Even the not-very-old melting pot that is America suddenly wants to keep our cultural mix right where it is, wants to keep out “others” who seem to be migrating in numbers sufficient to challenge the national identity. These leaders stoke a message that if “others” are taken in, even for humanitarian reasons, there will be more crime and there will be culture wars, perhaps even religious wars. Humanitarian motives get squelched, and belligerence and divisions take the place of compassion. It does not help that terrorists like Ayman al-Zawahiri (killed this week in an American drone strike) have said things like “[t]o kill Americans-civilian and military-is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in every country in which it is possible to do it. (1998) (quoted from WaPo, August 1, 2022, in the Obituary section)
In this way climate change becomes tied to the rise in authoritarianism and the cries to close borders all around the world. You can almost hear borders slamming shut. If the wealthy and the corporatists, who find themselves welcome in even the most authoritarian nations, are the ones seeing value in backing dictators and closed borders, citizens seem to find this comforting. But and there is a big but, if climate changes worsen, which they most likely will do without some alterations to our power sources that are at scale and almost immediate, then migrations may turn into panicked stampedes that overwhelm national borders, the desires of corporations, the demands of the rich, and the cruelties of authoritarian leaders.
Trying to organize people’s movements across the planet might be in order. The wealthy, corporations, and governments may choose to kill off those who try to cross closed borders. Clearly people can get used to anything if they feel they have little control over it, as happens in authoritarian states. Dealing with migration/immigration issues with genocide will be the end of any of our illusions that we are a race that has a higher purpose, that we are brainy and special.
However, we could just end our claim to human evolution and ascendancy by fighting over borders, and the world could devolve into chaos, war, pestilence, and starvation.
The corporatists are responsible for all of this, this is not the natural outcome of capitalism, but it is the natural outcome of a capitalist economy whose only focus is profits. This is what happen when there are too few regulations on capitalism. If the capitalists don’t stop blocking action on climate change you had better hope you have a secret cellar to stock with canned goods and MRE’s and guns (if you live in a place that won’t flood) because things are about to get worse than we can imagine. It might happen slowly, or the pace of decline might accelerate rapidly. We could certainly delay or avoid the advent of our agony by acting now. If the key focus is stopping migrations rather than lowering CO2 emissions and cleaning our oceans, we are doomed by our own prejudices and our inability to adapt.
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