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.

Will the people that we're having in be able to grow the economy though?

That may be the case still although tech might change the picture somewhat.

I think we were wedded to the Ponzi scheme of having to up the population but maybe we can get through it better as the need for workers falls anyway.

How many people do you think should be welcomed?

What is going to become of the UK?

I'm sure we could easily manage 200 million and that would surely save the NHS and social care 😂 they could even build a couple of HMOs on Rockall.

If the pandemic was man-made and for the point of wiring people out, why was a vaccine developed so quickly?

In the old days, pandemics would have raged far more fiercely until natural resistance developed.

Arguably, healthcare improvements are a cause of the resource strain. Even a century ago we didn't have nearly as many people surviving childbirth, childhood and into old age.

Any people coming are better than no people coming. Even the most unskilled migrant will still buy stuff (consume) and pay rent to someone.

Not that I advocate for this. From a deep green perspective, we need to stop population growth, stop economic growth, abandon fiat money and profit, and massively reduce the 'lifestyle' of everyone in the developed world.

Sounds a bit like the nights watch from Game of thrones.

More people, more concrete, more trash and litter, more dead wildlife, no healthcare and people fighting in the streets. A bit like Mogadishu, but with more rain.

I agree with most of this but Australia and New Zealand are reliable sources and are publishing data

You may need fewer workers with better automation of production, but you still need consumers (hence the argument for UBI).

The solution is to abandon economic growth.

They might want to come here. We can just say no and disallow them. Only UK citizens have a full unquestionable right to stay here. The Irish are also welcome subject to very certain and minimal restrictions, that's it!

But what of the state funding for lower economic arrivals? Is it always better to have someone than not if they require state funding?

Of course there isn’t a national grid for water. Water in Wales is taken to cities in England. Lake Vrnwy was literally created, and people moved out of their homes, to supply Liverpool. Severn Trent supples water from Wales to Birmingham.

Are the rich from the Middle East permanently living in London or simply owning property there, amongst other places?
I don’t think they’re exactly fleeing their hot countries.
I agree with pp, it’s about mitigating the effects of heat, and wealth makes that possible.
There are also plenty of people from the UK living comfortably in places like Dubai.

Ban Shein, Temu, Cider crap etc.
Close golf courses and rewild them.
Ban household and leisure pesticide use, and put additional restrictions on use for agriculture.
Stricter controls on agricultural fertiliser use.
Higher taxes on commercial flights.
Restrict food to seasonal goods only. This will have a positive effect on local growers, boosting the UK farming sector.
Ban concreting over of front and back gardens. Ditto plastic lawns.

That's just the start
We don't need new kitchens and cars and phones every 3 years etc.

A lot was achieved in past centuries with a population a fraction of what it is now. It’s worth remembering that there was mass unemployment after the Napoleonic wars ended and the harvest failures that followed.

With the advantages of technology and greater scientific understanding it is possible to do more with less. There are few problems that would not benefit from a much lower global population.

The social contract is broken. I think the way we are going we will eventually have to wave goodbye to the welfare state and the NHS and state pensions. None of this is sustainable with the balance of those relying on state support becoming larger.

@OneMoreBanana I think this a serious concern, and one we should be thinking about internationally. Of course there's going to be an exodus from the global South. It's about how we manage it. I'm 60, so I think it's the generations behind who are going to have to deal with this, but it's definitely going to happen and we should be planning now.

Aid won't stop global warming (whatever you think is causing it) and people will have to move if parts of the earth become uninhabitable. They'll be desperate.

No-one is going to shoot them or let them drown. The Navy would simply refuse any order from politicians to do so. The Oath of Allegiance is to the king and the law, not to the government. That oath, and the Law of the Sea, trump the whims of politicians.

Yes, that's true, and having been born in NZ and raised in Australia I tend to trust them.

I suppose I mentally dismiss that part of the world in discussions of contributions to climate change because it's so sparsely populated. But that's absurd, especially considering that NZ is arguably the most car-dependent country on the planet, and Australia isn't much better.

Because river catchments don't follow national borders.

Well there’s two things about that. (Edit - no didn’t become 2 😂)

1. your right for the British population as it stands.
2. we don’t have many children culturally but new arrivals have much more. They aren’t just replacing they are growing
3. thats really a good thing if we decrease our population because we currently can’t feed ourselves. With climate change and an extra harvest a year this might bring and the added diversity of veg then we might be able to but with this number of people but our soils will then be another problem. Hopefully we can figure that out.
4. We can’t grow indefinitely. So we have to sort this problem at some point.
5. I think economy will be the least of our problems when half the world is burning and we don’t have enough food.

I assume if it was ever done the Australian version would apply.

Well my viewpoint would be - why would it be expected of a small country with a huge population for its size to accept mass migration when there are much larger, more sparsely populated countries that are still habitable between the starting nation and the UK?

Soon the country will not be able to maintain its current set up of social support due to cost and increasing population. The UK will get worse, people will be sick and in poverty, why accelerate that for people from another country who are most likely
to come here and also live in poverty? Wouldn’t they rather live somewhere closer to their homeland with a more similar culture, language and people who look like them than live in poverty in a nation that is hostile and declining socially?