To think climate change will force a complete rethinking about immigration?

[OneMoreBanana]

I'm not sure how many people, on the ground or in government policy making, have connected the dots here.

The climate crisis disproportionately affects the global south, where average temperatures are hotter, infrastructure less developed and available economic resources for mitigation lower. This is already making life in some areas, that have previously supported human communities for thousands of years, near impossible. There is talk of whole cities having to be abandoned.

The same crisis is primarily created by the industrialised countries of the global north, whose per capita emissions far outweigh those of less industrialised countries.

So if/when the large scale exodus of millions of people from no-longer-habitable environments becomes inevitable, two questions arise: Is it MORAL to disallow those people asylum in countries like the UK? And is it PRACTICABLE to do so - when the "small boats" issue becomes an increasingly large number of increasingly large boats, do we literally just view it as warfare and gun them down, or what?

These questions apply regardless of how you feel about immigration currently. If you are a hardline Brexiteer or otherwise strongly for controlling and reducing immigration, can you see a point in the future where it will no longer be tenable, either morally or practically, to maintain that position? And if you are liberal on immigration, can you see a point where having to be even more liberal will mean letting go altogether of many aspects of the UK's (and other countries') "identity"?

Interested in a range of perspectives - I think there's a whole bunch of sacred cows that may end up slaughtered by this. However if you believe that climate change either isn't happening or isn't due to human activity, please just jog on past and grow a brain cell or two. Life is too short.

No it won't. Climate change-induced migration will mostly be regional, not global. It will be horrific of course, but I doubt it will result in a mass exodus from the global south to the north.

TBH I think we are all stuffed and there won't be enough resources to share whoever lives where.

I think as we have seen with Italy and Spain there will be a hard closing of boarders.

And if climate change does become a global disaster then I think the UK will do the same.

Yep, I would like to leave if we have another summer like this

Immigration to developed countries increases climate change because their carbon footprint becomes that of a western person. If people were really concerned about climate change, they would want to massively reduce immigration to the west, either that or the developed world has to stop using modern technology and massively reduce consumption and go back to living like our pre-industrial ancestors to reverse climate change.

If whole areas of North Africa become uninhabitable you don't think it will increase population flows to southern Europe?

If climate change becomes a global disaster and countries are facing water bankruptcy, then hard closing of borders won't last long and will descend into mass bloodshed and anarchy.

I think it will cause resentment within the UK. When you bear in mind that Wales is experiencing a drought, a quite extraordinary state of affairs, there’s definitely going to be resentment about water resources in one area being piped to another. I know that there is bad feeling about this in certain parts of the country already.

There are going to be people who are moving away from hot areas to cooler areas, either permanently or for the summer season. I already know of people who are moving away from the hot south and east for a few weeks. This isn’t going to go unnoticed in the area they travel to. It’s going to be climate tourism..

No, I think hard borders would be imposed (as they pretty much are already). I imagine Spain will abandon Ceuta and Melilla within the next 25 years or so as they become increasingly unsustainable and a security risk.

Famine-driven migration is very different from economic migration - people who are penniless and starving generally don't have the means to pay people smugglers.

It's inevitable. Leaders are incapable of taking the tough decisions to halt climate change so will have to deal with the consequences. Mass migration being one of them. Amazing the world is burning and the best we can come up with is don't buy disposable barbecues. Yes, that should do it.

Water resources from one area aren't piped to another though. We don't have a water national grid. Each water company is completely isolated - by geography more than anything else: they are defined by river catchments as water doesn't flow uphill.

Hard boarders are not imposed at the moment. We don’t have the navy shooting illegal immigrants. That is what I meant by hard boarders - this USSR style boarder control..

The way it's going I can imagine lots of people in southern Europe migrating further north.......

There are multiple catastrophes happening simultaneously. We are technologically on the precipice of mass unemployment whilst in a timeframe of active climate change and resource scarcity. The people at the top are anticipating a lot of death of the people at the bottom and are hoping that will help with the resource burden. That’s why they are doing absolutely nothing about migration and not too much about the climate, as the hope is one will cancel out the other. I fully expect another man-made pandemic will be unleashed and that will wipe out the vulnerable as they are too expensive to care for and will help with the Eugenics problem.

Greece and Turkey have hard borders which have reduced irregular migration to almost zero. Spain and Italy are going the same way. Denmark and Sweden have done the same.

You don't need to shoot people to impose hard borders - you just don't let them in, and the ones who do get in you immediately return to their starting point, country of origin, or a 3rd country.

The USSR shot people who were trying to leave, not get in.

"I'm not sure how many people, on the ground or in government policy making, have connected the dots here."

They all know it. I'm a civilian (uneducated lone parent) and even I know this. Heaven knows what they're planning / can do about it though.

Europe is heating up faster than any other continent on the planet, and we are not acclimatised or set up to deal with it. Emptying millions of Africans into Europe is not the answer, neither is going backwards to live like cavemen. The problem is poverty. They can cope with extreme temperatures in the Middle East because they are wealthy. I hope we can make great progress in nuclear technology and reach a point where countries globally are able to have affordable modular nuclear power plants and abundant energy.

I think there will be gunboats in the Channel, not happy about it but when it comes down to survival & resources our species gets ruthless.

The climate emergency is a global disaster.

Yep. Some areas are close to being unliveable.
Central London is full of the rich from the Middle East. People can’t manage in this heat.
Parts of India are already on the brink of being abandoned.

Immigration control is a notoriously imperfect art, which is why illegal immigrants exist at all. It's just not practically or financially realistic to monitor EVERY possible route into the country, with 100% effectiveness 24 hours a day 364 days a year. (I mentioned small boats, but there are of course other routes as well - are they going to slowly, carefully inspect EVERY SINGLE vehicle crossing the border, rather than just, as now, a random sample and those they have reason to be suspicious of?)

And then there's enforcement. Suppose for the sake of argument the government finds the money to construct and man a "hard border" around the entirety of the UK, withdraws from international asylum commitments and only allows entry to those with the legal right to enter. Thousands of people keep crossing the channel in boat after boat anyway, for the simple reason that they're desperate. Is it then just a simple question of shooting them and letting them drown? Are there no public relations implications to that, when those people are arriving due to a climate catastrophe we have created and they are suffering?

Not sure so reading replies to get views.

I did just wonder how African countries deal with drought and was led to aquifers, which help somewhat.

https://www.preventionweb.net/news/africas-aquifers-hold-more-20-times-water-stored-continents-lakes-they-arent-answer-water

Ceuta is a good example on this, it is possible to put a hard border up and Spain is ok with it.

I think once civilisation unravels to the point of anarchy, as people battle for resources, life will become dispensable I’m afraid. The only reason anyone is now civilised is because there was enough to go round.

Which many can legally if part of EU from Portugal to Sweden for example.