THE LINK BETWEEN CLIMATE CHANGE AND IMMIGRATION.
    by William R Morrow

A major result of climate change is rising sea levels. It doesn’t take much science to simply observe the “living lab” of sea level rise and its present day effects on Miami Beach and the Everglades. Just this January, the City of Miami Beach announced, in response to chronically rising waters, a one hundred million dollar project to raise roads, install pumps, and redo sewer connections.

   It is also clear that rising sea levels around the planet are connected to melting polar ice from small changes in temperature, whether these changes are permanent or not.

As more and more coastal lands in developing countries like Bangladesh become uninhabitable, many more people will be seriously affected. Whatever the time-line estimates of dire demographic circumstances, current observable effects are already observable in places much poorer than Miami Beach.

It is easy for those of us who live on higher ground to keep living in denial of climate change, and carry on as if the problems are minimal. But despite people’s beliefs about climate change, there is another bit of information that links immigration to climate change.

What this means is that inundated people of the planet will become refugees and immigrants. Landless people will go on the move in search of someplace else to find food and live their lives. There will be resulting pressure on world population that is bound to affect European countries, and ultimately North America. I recently heard a lecture by Karl Kaiser, Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School, which pointed to this major source of new immigration that is right around the corner. I was impressed with his knowledge and experience, which has been honored with the Atlantic Award of NATO.  Immigration and refugee movement, he notes, is already destabilizing Europe, and creating social instability. Even with the U.S. restrictions on immigration, these world population shifts will affect American economic (if not political) interests.

It won’t be long before the beliefs in “America First” and “Fortress America” will be in direct conflict with beliefs about how to deal with the economic and social effects of climate change. The two issues of climate change and immigration will be clashing head-on on our own shores. An unstoppable global change in the world as we know it will, in my view, force a reconsideration of how we view immigration. It is a moral issue of what we should do, but because of the inevitable clash, it is also a practical issue of what we will have to do.

If you would like to take up this cause locally, you could get involved with a political action group right here in Lee County. Check out: Lee OFA Indivisible on Facebook.

William Morrow is an ordained Presbyterian minister and licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, in Fort Myers. He is the author of "The Rain Doesn't Fall Straight Down".