Climate Change Could Trigger a New Age of Migration

Global climate change is real. Over the coming years it could get scary, because people seem to be "too stupid to live" as one Southern acquaintance used to say. Deniers of the phenomenon have made a brouhaha over emails between scientists, but regardless of their substance (not much), why, logically, would scientists worldwide conspire to falsify data and conclusions?

Where is the money? It's with the deniers, not with climate change proponents. There's media attention, too, for the deniers, disproportionate to their number--because of the money. Deniers in the US are a vocal, well-funded minority, and it's clear to see where their interests lie: they are funded, or would like to be funded by the likes of Exxon-Mobil. That's where the money is.

It's significant, too, that only in the United States, where corporate media dominates the dialogue, have the deniers gained major support.

What are the obvious interests of the scientists, the large majority, who agree that human-driven climate change is a crisis that must be addressed? Governments may pay some of them; foundations and academic institutions pay most of them. Do those institutions have an obvious interest in supporting the science of climate change?

Maybe they do: it's called long-term survival. Can you think of any other reasons? The right wing posits the conspiracy of governments everywhere wanting to control you and me. That's hard to square with the facts: some of the most authoritarian governments, like China and Russia, are reluctant late entrants to acting on global warming. European democracies, on the other hand, are the most outspoken in favor.

Maybe proponents are just anti-capitalist ideologues. I don't think you could characterize most of Europe and Japan as anti-capitalist.

Maybe capitalist ideologues, like American Republican conservatives, are against climate change because they can see the logic against unrestrained growth that can come with it. But they are also the ones who have obvious interests to defend.

Unfortunately, those people are the ones who seem to run this world--not the leaders, the people with the money behind them. They run enough of the media in one country, the United States, and are effective at spreading the almost-lie that sounds plausible. Just keep 'em doubting about the destructive effects of climate change for a few more years, while they stash away a couple hundred million more.

Do these people care? Do they really believe that scientists all over the world are simply out to rob them of their hard-earned millions? Why would they?

Suddenly, the deniers find emails between scientists in which they disagree about data, and they take that as proof that concern about human causes of this global problem are a hoax! Scientists argue about data and its meanings all the time; they are not arguing about the general thesis: the global changes are real, caused by human activity, and could get scary if not minimized by collective action.

However, because of the media efforts of the deniers, more people in the United States are saying things like, "Well…, maybe the jury's still out. Maybe those scientists were rigging the numbers. Maybe we should just keep burning oil until we know for sure. Besides, what's most important to me is the bad economy! Global warming is the least of my worries."

The change in American opinion is critical, since the US was the greatest polluter, continues to be number two, and is far and away the number one polluter per capita: if Obama doesn't have the political support to offer meaningful proposals for dealing with climate change, no agreement at or after Copenhagen will be possible.

So, maybe there won't be even a general agreement at Copenhagen. Then climate change will accelerate. Northern countries will get warmer and some parts drier, some wetter; they will also lose some coastline, but most important they will get more extreme weather; they will not become uninhabitable; in fact, some parts of Canada and Russia will probably become more habitable. Southern countries ironically, who until recently (China and India only in the last decade) had little to do with causing global warming, will become too hot and dry to sustain their already bursting populations. A few nations could largely disappear under the rising seas.

There will be famines. There will also be mass migrations. For historians who know about the end of the Roman Empire, events may begin to sound an eerie echo. The Roman Empire fell partly from its own weight, but partly because of the mass migrations of desperate German tribal hordes fleeing famine and the Huns on the steppes of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The movement of peoples was called the Migration Period.

This time, migration will come--has already been coming--from south to north.

If the world does nothing about climate change, existing in-migration will look tiny compared to the flood that could follow and the misery and social disruption brought along with it. Faces will be brown and black, but when the same thing happened with white faces (the Germanic tribes), the whole world, as people knew it, fell apart. Fences won't stop migration like this and neither will police and armies. People find a way--unless they don't have to, unless the world wakes up and does something sensible about climate change before it's too late.