Climate Memo Mondays #26

 

26.  Climate Memo Mondays, June 7, 2021

Kate Aronoff, Overheated.

     “Climate change is poised to cause the largest mass migration in human history, as millions are forced to leave homes rendered uninhabitable by rising sea levels, unbearable heat, and declining crop yields.  The best estimates hold that warming could displace anywhere between twenty-five million and one billion people. . . . 16.1 million people were displaced in 2018 by weather related disasters.”  “Border and immigration policies, in other words are climate policies,” yet at present the US has no admission policy for climate refugees, and the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis’s 538-page climate plan treats human migration “mainly as a menace,” although it recommended admitting “50,000 ‘climate displaced persons per year.’”  (Aronoff, 322, 324). 

    And when you add US policies that exacerbate the rising temperate, it’s no wonder immiseration, violence, wars, and people fleeing result.