Tag Archives: migration

December 2021 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Mass migration driven by climate change-triggered disasters could be the emerging big issue for 2022 and beyond. Geopolitical instability is a likely result, not to mention enormous human suffering.

Most hopeful story: Covid-19 seems to be “disappearing” in Japan, or at least was before the Omicron wave. Maybe lessons could be learned. It seems possible that East Asian people have at least some genetic defenses over what other ethnic groups have, but I would put my money on tight border screening and an excellent public health care system. Okay, now I’m starting to feel a bit depressed again, sitting here in the U.S. where we can’t have these nice things thanks to our ignorant politicians.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Time reminded us of all the industries Elon Musk has disrupted so far: human-controlled, internal-combustion-fueled automobiles; spaceflight; infrastructure construction (I don’t know that he has really achieved any paradigm shifts here, but not for lack of trying), “artificial intelligence, neurotechnology, payment systems and cryptocurrency.” I’m not sure I follow a couple of these, but I think they missed satellites.

drawing a line from Hitler to climate change

This 2015 Timothy Snyder article is called Hitler’s world may not be so far away. He is a well-respected historian whose previous books include Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin and Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning.

He calls the Holocaust “misunderstood” in the article, but he is not disputing facts or events that occurred. He makes a few points. First, we modern people tend to assume that we are morally superior to Germans of that period, and that we would not allow something like that to happen even under similar circumstances. He says there is no reason to believe this is true. Second, he points out that the worst deprivations occurred not within the borders of Germany or other western European states, but in lawless, stateless areas of eastern Europe. Nazi Germany intentionally created those lawless, stateless areas, but this holds lessons for failed states today, such as Syria. Third, he says that fear about the food supply in the 1930s was a significant driver of Hitler’s policy to expand east, creating space and farm land for Germans while exterminating or enslaving the inferior people who lived there. The so-called green revolution, which drastically accelerated agricultural yields, happened mostly after World War II. (We can argue later whether using massive fossil fuel inputs to produce fertilizer, pesticides, groundwater pumping at rates that will only be replenished over geologic time, and dumping the resulting waste in the ocean was a long-term solution, but it has fed a few billion people successfully for a few decades in a row now.)

So lessons for today are that as the climate crisis almost certainly worsens, we will see failed states, hunger and fear of hunger, mass migration, and these are all risk factors for genocide. I’ll pick a paragraph, but this long article really is worth a read.

Perhaps the experience of unprecedented storms, relentless droughts and the associated wars and south-to-north migrations will jar expectations about the security of resources and make Hitlerian politics more resonant. As Hitler demonstrated, humans are able to portray a looming crisis in such a way as to justify drastic measures in the present. Under enough stress, or with enough skill, politicians can effect the conflations Hitler pioneered: between nature and politics, between ecosystem and household, between need and desire. A global problem that seems otherwise insoluble can be blamed upon a specific group of human beings.

the role of drought in migration from Central America

The Guardian has an article on the role that drought and climate change play in migration of people from Central American countries such as Guatemala to the U.S.

Central America remains one of the world’s most dangerous regions outside a warzone, where a toxic mix of violence, poverty and corruption has forced millions to flee their homes and head north in search of security.

But amid a deepening global climate crisis, drought, famine and the battle for dwindling natural resources are increasingly being recognized as major factors in the exodus.

climate change and mass migration

This article tries to make a link between current mass migrations of people and climate, giving Syria as one example.

There is not a migrant or refugee crisis. We’re in the midst of a global migration shift. While its unrelenting realities of forced displacement, whether from war, persecution or economic despair originate from disparate causes, they all share a singular fact: The nascent stages of this historical migration shift require long-term planning, not short-term designation.

Nearly 60 million people fled their homes in 2014, according to a recent UN report. Within a generation, according to estimates by numerous climate scientists and the international organizations dealing with migration, 150-200 million people could be displaced by the fallout of severe drought, flooding and extreme climate.

As the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences noted in a recent study, “the severity and duration of the recent Syrian drought,” which has triggered some of the largest displacements of refugees across the Mediterranean, are a significant part of the roots of the Syrian civil war itself.