Europe is currently experiencing a mass migration problem (most refugees will never return home), on a relatively tiny scale but that should scare the hell out of most nations. Refugees are flooding Europe by the 100's of thousands and it's already causing political and social problems for the destination countries. The problems to come will include stress on local government resources, cultural differences, and a right wing backlash against immigrants.
And where are these refugees coming from? According to the UK's Independent
Many families arriving in the EU have stayed in several countries on their long journeys, while others have been driven out of places like Libya where they initially worked or sought refuge before it descended into turmoil.
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Ranked by citizenship, most migrants and refugees are from Kosovo, a partially-recognised state where youth unemployment stands at more than 55 per cent.
Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis make up some of the other largest groups, fleeing conflict and insurgencies from Islamist groups including Isis and the Taliban.
Whether you call them refugees or immigrants, what no one can deny is that this movement of people is causing big problems for many nations.
But this is really a drop in the bucket compared to what is about to happen to the world in the next several decades. The biggest impact on civilization caused by Global Warming, will be the absolutely unbelievable mass migrations that are just starting and that will overwhelm and crush destination countries. 100's of millions and possibly well over a billion people will be forced to leave their homes and move to a country with a more stable environment. What country, or group of countries can handle a doubling or tripling of their population in a few short years?
When people think of Global Warming, usually the first thing that comes to their mind is sea level rise. The dangers of Sea Level rise are often equated with the frog in the boiling pot syndrome. It's happening at the speed of light on a geological scale, but at the pace of a tortoise on a human scale.
A study by ClimateCentral.org estimates the number of people, by country, exposed to the dangers of sea level rise.
Although we may think of the dangers of Sea Level rise first when we think of Global Warming, the earliest and possibly most severe impacts of Global Warming that we are already experiencing, may include things like super storms and super droughts. The combined impacts of these lesser known effects of Global Warming will most likely lead to super mass migrations. There are people already arguing that the current unrest in the middle east, and specifically in Syria, grew from the seeds sown by an historic drought in the region in the latter years of the first decade of this century.
A National Center for Atmospheric Research study, as reported by ThinkProgress.org discusses the devastating impacts of global precipitation changes expected by 2069.
Precipitation changes by 2069
The NCAR study, which shows that in a half century, much of the United States (and large parts of the rest of the world) could experience devastating levels of drought — far worse than the 1930s Dust Bowl, especially since the conditions would only get worse and worse and worse and worse, while potentially affecting 10 to 100 times as many people. And this study merely models the IPCC’s “moderate” A1B scenario — atmospheric concentrations of CO2 around 520 ppm in 2050 and 700 in 2100. We’re currently on the A1F1 pathway, which would takes us to 1000 ppm by century’s end, but I’m sure with an aggressive program of energy R&D we could keep that to, say 900 ppm.
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As alarming as Figure 11 shows, there may still be other processes that could cause additional drying over land under global warming that are not included in the PDSI calculation. For example, both thermodynamic arguments124 and climate model simulations125 suggest that precipitation may become more intense but less frequent (i.e., longer dry spells) under GHG-induced global warming. This may increase flash floods and runoff, but diminish soil moisture and increase the risk of agricultural drought.
Of course, the elephant in the room, the problem nobody wants to talk about, the root cause of Global Warming, is
OVER POPULATION! The earth may be able to sustain a population with an American lifestyle (if we recycle and move to renewable energy) of around a billion people. We are currently at about 7.3 billion people and they've recently just bumped up the projection for population growth from 9 billion to 11.2 billion!
Population projections
We progressives need to be very careful on immigration issues. If you think the U.S. is going to be able to handle all the people who will want to immigrate here as they flee the effects of Global Warming, then you may be mathematically challenged. And as refugees start coming in larger and larger numbers and if you think there won't be a large backlash against immigration, then you may be politically challenged.
Now is the time to come up with a progressive policy to handle the Tsunami of refugees that will be running from the Global Warming induced civil wars and cross boarder wars for resources. And make no mistake, there aren't any perfect solutions, or even good solutions, but only less bad solutions. The price we must now pay for our negligence of addressing the over population and Global Warming problems when we had relatively painless solutions, may end up as a lifeboat approach to the mass immigration problems now beginning to form.
But also make no mistake, that if we progressives don't come up with an acceptable solution, the right wing racist anti-immigrant crowd will fuel the backlash that will sweep them into power, and the solutions they implement will be so repulsive, so authoritarian, we don't even want to think about it.
So while we have our typical food fights here at Dkos over who's candidate is an angel and who's is a bastard, we should not lose sight of the civilization ending situations we will be leaving our children if we stay home on election day because we made the perfect the enemy of the good.