Not even I would have the wild-eyed zealotry to definitively link the recent (thus-far disastrous) Brexit vote to climate change, and only to climate change.
But consider. The drought in Syria – and the subsequent violent unrest beginning in 2011 – has been more than tentatively linked to climate change.
The violent unrest in Syria led to a wave of migrants – mostly poor, mostly brown people – who have been flooding into Europe.
And it seems fairly certain that much of the impetus behind Brexit was xenophobia, pure and simple.
From that piece on Vox:
When my girlfriend and I were in London last week, a drunk man accosted us at a pub. That’s pretty par for the course there, in my experience. But this one — a middle-aged, dark-haired white guy we’ll call "Bob" — was different. He didn’t want to talk about soccer, or real ale, or his feelings on Americans.
No, Bob wanted to talk about Brexit — the UK referendum which, we all now know, ended in Britain voting to leave the European Union. Bob wanted Britain to leave, and he was very open about his reason: immigration. The Muslims and the Eastern Europeans, he believes, are ruining Great Britain.
"We’re letting in rapists. We’re letting in shit," Bob told us, repeatedly. "I have four children. How are they supposed to get jobs?"
This scene wasn't unique. It played itself out in thousands of pubs across the United Kingdom, and we've seen the results. Britain’s Bobs were driving force behind the successful Leave campaign. And the force that's been driving them is xenophobia.
Here in the USA our own “Bob for President,” Donald Trump, has similar feelings about Brexit.
Here are Drumpf’s inimitable comedy stylings on the matter:
You see it all over Europe and many other cases where they want to take their borders back. They want to take their monetary (sic) back. They want to take a lot of things back. They want to have a country again. I think you are going to have this more and more. I really believe that. And it is happening in the United States.
We all know that “take their borders back” is just code for fear of mostly poor, mostly brown people.
So how do we connect the dots?
I think that’s fairly obvious. Climate change = flooding of people from farms into already over-crowded cities. Violence and unrest ensures. Situation becomes untenable. Desperate people flee to the cities. Overcrowding, tensions, more violence – desperate people flee their country, and a mass of immigrants – mostly poor, mostly brown people – push into Europe.
In the UK, mostly older and white people, xenophobic and fearful, decide they’ll avoid dealing with the migrants by leaving the UK.
And so – Brexit, and the resultant panic and chaos.
Think that’s a tenuous string of events? Okay, fine.
But consider. If the world doesn’t mobilize to tackle climate change on a highly accelerated timeline, we are facing a world where vast swaths of now inhabited land become uninhabitable. In May, temperatures hit 51C inPhalodi, Rajasthan. The pavement was melting. If you lived there, and that kept up, would you be tempted to move?
Climate change migration and refugees seem inevitable at this point. And these newly-minted immigrants are also likely to train their eyes north – to 1st world nations with infrastructure and working economies. And as more people from different cultures move into smaller habitable spaces and compete for resources, the outcome will inevitably be conflict.
At the moment, younger folks are more confidently future-facing, and more able to embrace diversity and cultural difference. In the UK, 75% of young people voted to stay in the EU.
So perhaps as the older, terrified white folks in the State and Northern Europe die off, the more diverse, browner folks who inherit those countries, cultures and economies will be able to handle mass climate change-driven migration?
Maybe so… but likely not.
When the going gets tough, it’s hard not to get scared. When you’re fighting for your job and you see “others” coming from elsewhere who might take that job, you want to push back. When your hold on making it is tenuous, you aren’t likely to welcome new people to share what’s already spread far too thin.
When resources are scarce, people fight for what they believe is theirs. And when people are terrified and fighting for their lives…
It isn’t hard to envision a world where mass migration driven by the warming climate produces a wave of nationalism and insularism, as people who perceive themselves as being “invaded” circle the wagons and try to hold onto whatever tenuous present security they have.
More, and more intense, xenophobia will lead to more breaking down of larger aggregations of people. Broader coalitions may dissolve. States may devolve to smaller units – think the move for Catalan independence, and the Faroe Islands in Denmark. Think about Flanders and the Istrians. Think about fighting tooth and nail against former allies for scarce resources, as more and more desperate people crowd into spaces that simply don’t have the resources to support them.
It isn’t hard to take the leap and think about Brexit as the beginning of the end of any hope of a broader global community. And it isn’t hard to be afraid. To be VERY afraid.