Immigration Will Spike
With Global Warming

Immigration caused by global warming will be as momentous as the "Great Migrations."

The great migrations were waves of peoples that began in the early centuries of human history, peoples moving as tribes, hunting parties, or invaders. They came out of the vast steppes of Central Asia, and they moved west, south and even east, into the more moderate climates of China, South Asia, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Europe as the huge herds of game that had fed them for millennia began to dwindle: the grasslands were becoming too arid.

The names of these peoples on the move were legion and span from earliest history to about the 9th century AD: Semites, Greeks, Latins, Persians, Aryans, Celts, Germanic tribes, Huns, Turks, Mongols and Slavs. They told sagas of their journeys, and we know them today as legends like the Nibelungs, the Puranas, the Ramayana and the Greco-Roman myths: conquest stories of forgotten ages, people moving into the relatively unsettled lands of the time: Europe, for example, was losing population after about 200 AD.

These momentous waves of Immigration were caused by climate change: people migrating to lands where they could survive, from lands where they couldn't. The Goths were driven west in the late fourth century because the Huns pushed them before them: the Huns were in search of better pastures and plunder, the Goths for better agricultural land; the Goths were starving when they reached the border of the Roman Empire. The Romans let them settle, but tried to exploit them. The result was Alaric the Goth sacking Rome in 410, and his followers later taking over southern Gaul and Spain.

Now, industrial civilization is causing global warming, and millions, hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of people will be on the move again--north this time. Tropical climes will become less and less sustainable for large populations; predictions are for extreme droughts, disastrous floods, and rising seas for most of the southern and many of the middle latitudes. Global warming is coming fastest to the far north, which means that vast stretches of the Earth that had been barely habitable for most of human existence may become the most welcoming to human population in the future.

If you look at the globe in terms of population, it soon becomes obvious that the northern latitudes, dominated by the huge landmasses of Russia, Siberia and Canada, are relatively empty; the middle latitudes are crowded with most of today's important nations, including the US, China and the East Asian and European nations; they are thickly populated already. The tropical and southern latitudes, most without as much industrial infrastructure, nations like Bangladesh, the whole of Africa, large parts of the Middle East and southern Asia, parts of South and Central America all have rapidly growing populations. Some of the nations in these regions, like India and Bangladesh, have huge populations, but because of global warming their climates will become less and less hospitable; more and more people will have to leave.

Where will these people go?

Will Indians and Bangladeshis reverse the great migrations by moving north into the empty lands of Siberia from whence the Aryans came? The permafrost won't be habitable for centuries, although its melting will probably accelerate global warming, but the Taiga (the evergreen forests to its south) will be more easily settled. Already, Africans and Asians press into Europe, Latin Americans press into the US and Canada: immigration is already a political hot potato in Europe and the US; it will be in Russia and Canada, as well.

However, if we look at immigration not as a national (state) issue, but as a global issue, as an expected human response to global warming, adding massively to the current flow of people driven by economic disparity, we can see: nations will be unable to prevent immigration; the people will keep on coming, millions and millions of them.

What would be a rational response to massive immigration from south to north caused by global warming? What will we do if global warming spirals out of control, a likely outcome if governments don't act quickly to drastically curb green house gas emissions?

Perhaps the first step would be to insure that all people are documented, have legal status and can move as freely as capital. Perhaps the UN could issue global passports.

It's true that unchecked immigration would wreak havoc on labor policies, wage levels, social and health insurance, education systems and almost everything else, but open immigration policies would at least allow national governments to harness the flow and enable them to put immigrant earnings to work funding those programs. Almost everything else flows from adequate documentation of immigration: education that would enrich the nation not impoverish it, adequately funded health care and social insurance, security from crime and terrorism, and improved labor conditions, since documented workers would feel secure enough to organize.

If nations do not deal with immigration rationally, if they attempt to build walls and fences, criminalize immigrants, police populations, they won't stop immigration: they will simply drive it underground while creating repressive polities. Crime will thrive, labor standards and wages will plummet, education will go bankrupt, as will health and social insurance systems and public health will be out of control. And someday (if we don't all die of plagues first) the undocumented "rabble" will overthrow the established powers-that-be in bloody revolutions, or takeovers like the one in 476, in which the newcomers (Ostrogoths) gained control of the military--and then destroyed the Roman Empire.

In the aftermath of global warming, if humans survive it, will the survivors tell new legends, new myths, to eulogize their heroes of the new, even greater Great Immigration?