At Some Level, Each of Us Knows This

We've left it much too late to stop it and we're just going to have to face the consequences of our folly. It's one thing to recognize that our high-carbon economy is creating climate perils elsewhere, especially in places where the brown and black people live. It's beyond stupid to proceed on the assumption there won't also be a price for us to pay.

Climate change, global warming, is rendering some peoples' homelands uninhabitable. Too many hurricanes, too much drought, too much heat - the human organism can't evolve fast enough to cope with all the changes. And then there's food insecurity, famine. 

People aren't going to sit put and watch their kids die. Would you? Do you think they should just stay put? Think about that as you mull over Jason Kenney and Justin Trudeau and the pros and cons of bitumen pipelines. They're connected, almost joined at the hip.

A court in France wrestled with whether a Bangladeshi man with severe asthma could be deported to his homeland.  The appeals court in Bordeaux ruled against the state. The man can stay in France.

Sailesh Mehta, a barrister specialising in environmental cases, said: “The link between migration and environmental degradation is clear. As global warming makes parts of our planet uninhabitable, mass migration will become the norm. Air and water pollution do not respect national boundaries. We can stop a humanitarian and political crisis from becoming an existential one. But our leaders must act now.”

He added: “We have a right to breathe clean air. Governments and courts are beginning to recognise this fundamental human right. The problem is not just that of Bangladesh and the developing world. Air pollution contributes to around 200,000 deaths a year in the UK. One in four deaths worldwide can be linked to pollution.”

A right to breathe clean air. A human right. I wonder what other rights those who endure the impacts of our high carbon intransigence can claim?  Is there a right to life, a right not to be driven off your land by heat so severe as to be intolerable to the human body? Is there a right to feed your children, a right not to see them die of starvation caused by climate-change driven megadroughts?

Let's get this straight. The House of Saud; the sheikhs, emirs and princes of the Persian Gulf; Iran and Iraq; the fossil energy giants; the political caste that enacts energy policies that are oblivious to the consequences to others of our high-carbon economies and the people who, for want of access to alternative clean energy are compelled to remain fossil energy consumers whether it's to fuel their vehicles, heat their homes or keep food on the shelves of their grocery stores; we're all accountable, in varying degrees, to these climate migrants.

 

Several climate scientists predict that the 2020s will be the decade of great heating. There's a term for it, "climate departure." It's an abrupt transition from an historic normal to a new climate in which there won't be natural fluctuation between cold and hot years, only hot and hotter years. That's expected to start in the most latitudinally vulnerable regions in the next few years. 

One of Joe Biden's first challenges will be the mass migration of climate and political refugees heading north, seeking sanctuary in the United States. Do you think the American people will have some massive Kumbaya moment and set an extra place at the table? Do you think Americans of the southern states will see these migrants as people deserving of their compassion or as a threat? 

Donald Trump skinned the veneer off America to show that the Ugly American is real and there's an awful lot of them. It was xenophobia, racism and fear of "the other" that brought him to power and there was plenty of it remaining in the 74 million votes he received last November.

Joe Biden has a problem with the Guatemalan migrants but a greater problem right at home.