Climate change is not equally felt across the globe, and neither are its longer term consequences. This map overlays human turmoil — represented here by United Nations data on nearly 64 million “persons of concern,” whose numbers have tripled since 2005 — with climate turmoil, represented by data from NASA’s Common Sense Climate Index. The correlation is striking. Climate change is a threat multiplier: It contributes to economic and political instability and also worsens the effects. It propels sudden-onset disasters like floods and storms and slow-onset disasters like drought and desertification; those disasters contribute to failed crops, famine and overcrowded urban centers; those crises inflame political unrest and worsen the impacts of war, which leads to even more displacement. There is no internationally recognized legal definition for “environmental migrants” or “climate refugees,” so there is no formal reckoning of how many have left their homes because climate change has made their lives or livelihoods untenable. […]
Saturday, April 22nd, 2017
How a Warming Planet Drives Human Migration
Author: JESSICA BENKO
Source: The New York Times Magazine
Publication Date: APRIL 19, 2017
Link: How a Warming Planet Drives Human Migration
Source: The New York Times Magazine
Publication Date: APRIL 19, 2017
Link: How a Warming Planet Drives Human Migration
Stephan: It has been eight years since my first essay "Migration" was published in Explore in March 2009. For a long time readers and others who heard me speak about this, criticized me for being an alarmist. Several climate deniers cited my work as an example of "over-the-top exaggeration" by a "climate change fanatic."
Well now we have come to this. Migrations as a geopolitical concern, as I have been trying to make my readers aware, have become a very big deal. Why? Because as I predicted they hold the potential for massive social disorder and even the collapse of societies. Here is the New York Times take on the subject. Sound familiar?