While We Debate Climate Change, the Rest of the Planet Prepares for Mass Migration

While we here in the good old U.S. of A. are still debating climate change (whether it exists, whether it is man-made) the rest of the planet not only agrees it is real, but is planning for its impact on mankind. One such change has generated a term hardly ever heard in the United States but well known to the rest of the globe: environmental refugee.

We let ourselves be held back by those who refuse to admit sea temperatures are rising due to human activity. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is busily planning how to handle the fallout when larger portions of the globe become uninhabitable. Millions of people have already been forced from their homes due to climate change. Millions more will soon be forced out by floods, cyclones, tornadoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, droughts, increased storm cycles and other environmental catastrophes.

The following statement by the European Union's European Commission for the Environment was issued in 2008. It describes the massive planning already under way to prepare for huge surges of people made homeless by nature.

"Environmental refugees already number some 25 million, and it is estimated that by 2020, some 60 million people will move from desertified areas in Sub-Saharan Africa towards Northern Africa and Europe. But this south-north migration is nothing, compared to internal migrations within Africa itself. Most internal refugees settle in bloated megacities, a trend that -- given the scarce water resources -- is regarded as a potential disaster. Trapped in a deteriorating environment without access to freshwater and plagued by rising food prices, refugees and locals alike may be prone to poverty, disease, and unrest."

The Europe Parliament is beginning to weigh the following questions:

1) How many environmental refugees should be allowed to settle on that continent?

2) Should European countries contribute greater sums to non-developed nations so they can try to absorb their own displaced residents?

There's no international consensus on the definition of an "environmental refugee," much less on how to deal with them. Natural disasters have been displacing people for centuries. Remember biblical references to the cedars of Lebanon? Those trees were so popular in ancient times, for building everything from palaces to furniture, that mankind essentially deforested Lebanon and desertification followed. Back then, global human population was but a smidgen of its current size. There were plenty of habitable regions available to refugees fleeing famines, droughts, massive storms and so on. That is no longer the case.

Today's environmental catastrophes are markedly more destructive and create more refugees because the volume of the displaced has magnified by geometric proportions due to population increases.

Here's but one recent example. A series of record cyclones during this decade has wiped out human habitat for millions of people along Bangladesh's Bay of Bengal coast and its inland mangrove forests and deltas -- 6 million, to be precise.

The Bangladesh city of Dhaka was home to a mere 200,000 people 30 years ago, according to the Guardian website. As a result of the flooding, it is now the fastest-growing city in the world and has 15 million residents. Most of the population increase has been driven by villagers deserting coastal homelands after cyclones and tidal flooding. Climatologists predict one-third of Bangladesh could be under water by the year 2050. (Guardian.com has a series of riveting videos profiling the victims of Cyclone Aila whose villages are permanently underwater.)

But Americans should not hold out hope nor fool themselves into thinking that environmental refugees will be limited to flooded mangrove forests in Asia or drought-stricken populations in Africa.

Some astute planners believe sea level increases during this century could make much of New York City uninhabitable. As science writer Bruce Stutz notes:

With only a foot and a half of sea level rise -- a realistic prediction for 2050 -- a storm as severe as Katrina could require New York City to evacuate as many as 3 million people. A three-foot rise in sea level -- which could well occur by the 2080s -- could turn major storms into minor apocalypses, inundating low-lying shore communities in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island; shutting down the city's metropolitan transportation system; flooding the highways that surround the city; and rendering the tunnels that lead into the city impassable.

What is strikingly similar in all the literature on environmental refugees is the lack of reference to the basic cause of the problem: human overpopulation. Most of the concern is raised by progressive human rights or church assistance organizations, who see the "right" to emigrate (to higher, safer habitats) as a human or natural right. They demand money and assistance from developed nations, some of which may well -- and should -- be forthcoming. But the problem calls for another consideration too politically incorrect to utter: human population growth must be slowed. And until that aspect of the problem is dealt with, every other attempt to deal with what could soon become unprecedented levels of homelessness could be in vain.