THE SET-UP: A candidate for President of the United States is now directly responsible for telling and re-telling a grotesque lie about refugees to purposefully gin-up a racist backlash that has led to bomb threats and the evacuation of elementary schools.
But that's not all.
Today he vowed wholesale deportations in the suddenly embattled town of Springfield, Ohio. Even worse, he's talking about holding a rally there, which is a bomb threat all its own. He's ramping up his rhetoric and it's having a material impact on people he's calling a "threat" to "our way of life." He's framing them as an existential threat and it's creating a familiar permission structure ... and we've seen what happens when his followers are granted "permission." We’ve also seen what happens when a demagogue singles out an ethnic group as an internal threat
No, Springfield’s Haitian refugees are not climate migrants. But some recent migrants are, including many fleeing a drought in Honduras.
And more of those migrants are likely to come … soon. - jp
TITLE: Public Opinion of Climate Migrants: Understanding What Factors Trigger Anxiety or Support
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/public-opinion-climate-migrants
EXCERPT: As climate change plays a growing role in how, when, and where people move, the question of how these migrants are received is increasingly important. At times, people moving due at least in part to disasters and climate change may elicit significant empathy. For instance, those forced to leave their homes by hurricanes and floods often enjoy a generous welcome in host communities, at least in the short term. But much of the migration spurred by climate and weather events lies in a fuzzy gray area, neither wholly voluntary nor wholly forced—as when drought or sea level rise gradually erodes livelihoods. In these cases, whether migrants will be welcomed is harder to predict, not least because the communities receiving them are often themselves dealing with climate shocks and resource scarcity.
Given its unpredictability, climate mobility may trigger anxiety around immigration that is linked to a sense of disorder, unfairness, and loss of control. In turn, this anxiety can erode public support for both immigration and climate action. And without public license, policymakers’ ability to undertake creative and bold solutions becomes much narrower.
A review of polling and experimental data from around the world suggests that how climate mobility triggers solidarity versus opposition is neither straightforward nor unidirectional. Key findings include:
Climate migrants do not necessarily elicit more support or sympathy than other kinds of migrants. Academics and advocates sometimes presume greater acceptance for people who are forced to move due to life-threatening circumstances and thus are seen as “not to blame” for their migration, but perceptions of who is forced to move vary. Many people who move at least in part due to slow-onset climate impacts (for instance, if lack of water degrades agricultural livelihoods over time), rather than sudden disasters (such as floods), may not be seen as blameless victims. This is borne out by the empirical evidence, which shows mixed results on whether public attitudes are more positive toward climate migrants than other migrants.
People displaced by visible, sudden-onset disasters may elicit significant solidarity in the short term—but this may not last. Polling in refugee-hosting countries shows that many people support refugees when they believe they will eventually return to their country of origin. While most disaster displacement is currently short term, there is growing evidence tying climate impacts with protracted displacement and permanent movement. If people worry that climate mobility will be massive and permanent (an idea that is perversely reinforced by alarmist narratives designed to mobilize climate action), this can increase anxiety.
It is the unpredictability of future climate mobility—rather than the numbers alone—that is likely to trigger public anxiety. Publics tend to support immigration more when it is planned and orderly versus unanticipated and chaotic. But climate mobility is inherently hard to anticipate. The frequency, severity, and impacts of climate events have eluded even the most sophisticated forecasting models. And even perfect forecasting cannot predict whether people will adapt in place or migrate—and if they migrate, whether they will cross international borders.
Host communities’ own struggles with climate-change impacts may make them less welcoming to migrants. The fact that many migrants move to places that are themselves adversely affected by climate change and environmental degradation can be a source of tension that goes beyond the usual concerns around the distribution of resources between migrants and locals. For example, host communities struggling to adapt to floods and droughts may have less capacity or desire to welcome migrants, and they may feel resentment if international actors come in to support climate adaptation and resilience efforts that prioritize newcomers.
Efforts to increase support for potential climate migrants and to promote climate action often draw on three broad types of narratives, each of which has potential pitfalls. Narratives of urgency, which stress the potential scale of climate mobility, may heighten a sense of disorder and provoke panic or apathy (“apocalypse fatigue”). Narratives of victimhood attempt to create empathy with climate-displaced people. But since climate change, unlike other displacement drivers such as conflict, affects everyone (albeit unevenly), these narratives may unintentionally make people more worried about their own vulnerability rather than more sympathetic toward migrants. Finally, positive narratives of migration emphasize migrants’ ability to contribute to climate resilience or the green transition (e.g., making economies less carbon-intensive). But these narratives can ignore the potential strains migrants can place on host communities, and they can promise more than can be delivered—not least because of policy barriers that stymie efforts to capitalize on migration in the promised ways. Narratives that exaggerate benefits without acknowledging costs can sound disingenuous and false.
Because of the risks inherent in these narratives, particularly in a time of high polarization around migration more broadly, policymakers should be strategic about whether, when, and how they raise the saliency of climate migration issues. Instead of invoking fear or emphasizing the vulnerability of climate-displaced people, they should promote practical actions the public can take to build communities that are both resilient and inclusive. And instead of simply promising that climate migrants can have a positive impact on a society, policymakers should work to prepare host communities to accommodate newcomers and to ensure that migration is safe, well-managed, and contributes to climate action. Fostering public understanding of climate migration as an important issue while mitigating anxiety about its impacts is difficult, but striking this balance is essential to good policy that supports both climate migrants and the communities in which they settle.
TITLE: The climate crisis is making places unlivable. Where are people going?
https://thinklandscape.globallandscapesforum.org/69735/where-are-climate-refugees-going/
EXCERPTS: From New Zealand to Nigeria and as far north as the Arctic, floods and fires have pushed people from their homes across the globe in recent years.
There are no comprehensive global statistics of climate-induced human migration, but the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) listed an “all-time high” of 71 million internally displaced people (IDPs) globally in 2022.
That included 32.6 million people displaced by disasters – a 40-percent increase from the previous year.
That year, notes the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), 84 percent of refugees and asylum seekers fled from highly climate-vulnerable countries, up from 61 per cent in 2010.
And that figure is set to continue rising. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has projected that 143 million people are likely to be uprooted by sea level rise, drought, extreme heat and other climate disasters over the next 30 years.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) argues that ‘persons displaced in the context of disasters and climate change’ don’t qualify as refugees because most of them are internally displaced – and only people forced to flee across borders are considered refugees.
Nonetheless, in 2020, the agency published a set of legal considerations acknowledging that some people may be entitled to claim asylum abroad following a climate event or disaster.
This, however, only applies if they face “persecution“ as a result of such a disaster and are unable to relocate internally, or if the disaster is an “event seriously disturbing public order.”
The creation of ‘climate refugees’ as a legal category is welcome but inadequate, especially as governments have done little to address the root cause of climate-induced displacement around the world.
The U.S., for instance, has focused on fortifying its borders, including signing a recent deal with Mexico to deport Central American migrants from its border cities.
Many of these migrants were displaced by climate disasters, such as more frequent and intense hurricanes, landslides and floods, and a string of droughts that have caused crops to fail.
Meanwhile, across Africa, there’s a lack of both resources and political will to address climate-induced displacement. Regional organizations like the African Union have begun to acknowledge the issue, but implementation remains slow.
In Asia-Pacific, Australia’s recent deal with Tuvalu, a Pacific Island nation that’s predicted to become entirely submerged within decades, marks a significant step forward.
It includes provisions for relocation assistance, including the resettlement of 280 Tuvaluans in Australia each year, and support for climate adaptation, such as bolstering the low-lying atoll’s coastal defenses.
But to date, such agreements are the exception rather than the norm.
TITLE: America’s Great Climate Migration Has Begun. Here’s What You Need to Know.
https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/americas-great-climate-migration-has-begun-heres-what-you-need-know
EXCERPT: There’s no doubt that the climate crisis disproportionately affects poor countries. Populations that depend on farming or fishing are extraordinarily vulnerable to nature’s whims. Indeed, one report by the World Bank, coauthored by Columbia geographer Alex de Sherbinin, predicts that more than two hundred million people in low-income countries may migrate as a result of climate change by 2050.
But could Americans experience similar upheavals? Could we, despite our relative wealth and long history of bending nature to our will, one day find that large sections of our country have become uninhabitable?
“We’ll likely see population shifts in the US in the coming decades because of climate change,” says de Sherbinin, who directs the Columbia Climate School’s Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) and teaches a course on climate migration. “Not everybody is necessarily going to go far. But we could see significant movements, probably away from the coasts and toward the north.”
According to de Sherbinin, some studies have indicated that tens of millions of Americans could be uprooted by global warming this century. However, there is great uncertainty about how many people may move and when, in part because individual decisions about whether to migrate are highly complex, involving not just environmental factors but economic, cultural, and social ones. “In other countries, we’ve observed that climate change is rarely the sole reason people decide to relocate,” says de Sherbinin, who has led several landmark studies on global migration patterns. “If people still have their livelihoods and there’s infrastructure to keep them reasonably safe, they’ll often stay and try to adapt, even in the face of pretty extreme environmental pressures.” So the amount of migration that we should expect to see in the US, he explains, will be strongly influenced by the public investments we make in supporting and protecting people in the least hospitable places. “The big question then becomes: how many resources do we put into adaptation efforts, and for whom?”
One thing that climate scientists know for sure is that America’s natural environment will be utterly transformed by mid-century, with profound implications for people’s health, safety, and quality of life. This will be true even under optimistic climate scenarios, such as if the world’s largest economies accelerate their transition to renewable-energy systems and hold average global temperatures to five or six degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels. Scientists now know with a fair degree of certainty, for example, that sea levels will rise one to two feet along the Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard by 2050, putting millions of homes at risk for regular flooding. “We’ll probably figure out ways to protect large sections of New York City, Boston, and Miami, because they contain huge numbers of people and billions of dollars in infrastructure, but countless other coastal communities situated in between major cities are going to have a more difficult time adapting,” de Sherbinin says. “State and local governments don’t have the resources to build seawalls around every seaside town. So all along the coasts you’re going to see homeowners and businesses trying to relocate. And where residents are too poor to move, we may see stranded assets as insurers pull out.”
Also by mid-century, climate scientists expect that large sections of the West will be turning into desert, that the Great Plains and the South will be stricken by heat waves and oscillating periods of drought and flooding that will make farming much less productive, and that parts of the South will be so hot and humid in the summertime that it will be dangerous to go outdoors. Climate models suggest that the heat index or “real feel” temperature — which describes the combined effects of heat and humidity — could regularly exceed 130 degrees Fahrenheit in many southern states, a level that has rarely been observed anywhere and that is life-threatening even to strong, physically fit people at rest.
Global warming is already causing subtle demographic shifts in the US. Climate-driven natural disasters like wildfires, hurricanes, and floods — which have all grown more frequent, intense, and destructive this century — now force two to three million Americans from their homes annually, and Census Bureau surveys indicate that many displaced people are choosing to permanently relocate out of harm’s way. The US government is also actively encouraging people to clear out of vulnerable areas. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has in recent years ramped up its efforts to acquire properties that routinely flood, many of which are being restored to estuaries, marshes, and wetlands that act as natural buffers against future storms. Meanwhile, old industrial northern cities, from “Climate-Proof Duluth,” Minnesota, to Burlington, Vermont, are billing themselves as “climate havens” in an effort to lure newcomers and revitalize their economies.
“Northern states could see an influx of people, because their summers will still be fairly pleasant and their winters less severe,” says de Sherbinin. Particularly well-positioned geographically, he says, are states near the Great Lakes, since fresh groundwater will be an increasingly precious resource as the planet warms. De Sherbinin frequently gives lectures in New England and the Great Lakes region about the need for policymakers and urban planners to prepare for the arrival of climate migrants. “Cities and towns throughout these regions could benefit economically and culturally,” he says. “But they need to start planning to provide housing, education, health care, and other services for more people.”
The total number of Americans who might already be considered “climate migrants” is modest but growing. This past winter, Jeremy Porter, a sociologist who teaches at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and at CUNY, published one of the first empirical studies on the subject. In a paper in the journal Nature, he and colleagues revealed that approximately 3.2 million people in the US have moved in an effort to escape flooding over the past two decades. In that time, climate change has made flooding worse across the entire country, not just along the coasts. “Inland communities that rarely faced flooding in the past are now getting washed out by heavier rainfall,” says Porter, whose team used big-data techniques to confirm that flood risk was causing people to move out of their neighborhoods. “In response, people in just about every county are now fleeing low-lying areas.”
Those who are leaving flood zones aren’t necessarily going long distances. In fact, the majority of them are moving to higher ground in the same county, Porter found. But in a forthcoming paper, he and his colleagues reveal that homebuyers are starting to avoid entire states because of their vulnerability to wildfires, extreme heat, and windstorms. “Several of these states, like California, Texas, and Florida, are still experiencing population growth, but we found evidence that they’re now growing more slowly than they would be if not for these climate hazards,” says Porter. “Some people, it seems, are finally taking these risks into consideration when choosing where to live.”
You might wonder why it’s taken them so long to do so. Climate scientists have for years been warning Americans that they are endangering themselves by settling in places like the parched, wildfire-prone woodlands of California and Nevada; the eroding coastlines of Florida and South Carolina; and the sweltering Southwestern states. Yet Americans have continued to flock to these places, causing their populations to grow dramatically in recent decades. They continue to do so today, notwithstanding the small deceleration in growth detected by Porter, despite the costs in deaths and dollars. In 2023, the US experienced a record-breaking twenty-eight climate and weather disasters that each caused $1 billion or more in damages; these events killed nearly five hundred people.
Environmental journalist Abrahm Lustgarten ’03JRN, in his new book, On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America, considers why so many Americans live in high-risk locations and what it might take for them to leave. The reason for our current population distribution, he asserts, is largely economic, since US elected leaders, with the backing of financial institutions, have long encouraged the construction of homes just about anywhere possible, including in the paths of wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, and floods. For a long time, this aggressive development strategy paid off, because natural disasters were relatively rare and the costs of repairing properties when catastrophes did occur were easily shouldered by insurance companies. But in recent years, disaster-recovery costs have skyrocketed, causing insurance companies in California, Florida, and several other states to start losing money. Property owners have so far been largely insulated from these losses, says Lustgarten, because state leaders, fearing that a mass exodus of residents would destabilize their real-estate markets and shrink their tax base, have — through regulation and subsidy — prevented insurance companies from significantly raising their rates. But sooner or later, Lustgarten argues, homeowners in vulnerable areas will have to shoulder the true cost of their coverage, which will cause property values to plummet. In the meantime, he says, subsidy programs are giving homeowners a false sense of security, making them unaware of the full extent of their financial exposure.
“The cost of insurance is an indispensable signal,” Lustgarten writes. “It’s not the only tool that represents the risks of climate change, but just as an auto-collision policy is more expensive for a teenage boy than for an adult driver, a high cost for homeowners’ coverage offers a clear, market-based sign of danger … Subsidizing insurance distorts that warning signal. It minimizes the perception of the real risk that people face.”
There are signs that the costs of climate hazards are pushing the US insurance industry to a breaking point. New York Times reporter Christopher Flavelle ’09SIPA revealed in an investigative series this year that insurance companies are now routinely losing money on homeowners’ policies in at least eighteen states — primarily because of wildfires, floods, and intensifying windstorms — and that in response many companies are refusing to sell or renew policies in certain at-risk areas, leaving homeowners scrambling to find coverage. Some state regulators, in a desperate attempt to persuade the companies to continue to provide coverage, have permitted them to raise rates, which have jumped 50 percent or more in some areas, with further increases expected. Flavelle called the development “a flashing red light” for the US economy. Without affordable insurance, “banks won’t issue a mortgage; without a mortgage, most people can’t buy a home,” he writes. “With fewer buyers, real-estate values are likely to decline.”
Lustgarten, in On the Move, predicts that the first big, conspicuous waves of climate migration in the US will begin when the bottom falls out of housing markets in the most vulnerable regions. If these markets do crash, he writes, they are likely to crash quickly, without much warning. And then, he writes, “a Darwinian game of financial survival” will ensue. Homeowners with enough cash liquidity to purchase new homes elsewhere will do so, and everyone else will be left with stranded assets, living in hollowed-out communities with less money for schools, police, and other basic services — let alone for floodwalls, wildfire barriers, and other adaptation measures that will be urgently needed.
“If that sounds unreasonably apocalyptic, it’s almost exactly what leaders in Louisiana are right now warning about,” Lustgarten writes. He notes that many parishes along the Gulf Coast have seen a flight of middle-class and wealthy residents in recent years; those left behind have watched their neighborhoods devolve into blight. “Many of the people who have remained in coastal Louisiana as others have left have no means to help their communities raise more money,” he writes. “They themselves are desperately poor, their homes having lost so much value … They would leave, too, if not for their inability to sell and get out.”