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.

Yes, someone up thread said something similar.

Fair point.

Next Tuesday.

An awful lot of people will die and the remainder will find asylum somewhere. We are likely to be struggling for food and water too, so attitudes will harden against letting more people in. Many more summers like this one and Southern Europe will be in real trouble, let alone Africa.

I think this is a massively important question - possibly the most important question underlying the whole crisis.

And it's also a proxy for an even more fundamental question: Why do we have to keep getting richer. Or EVEN (for the many who don't feel that the current state of the economy is making them any richer): Can we realistically expect to avoid getting poorer?

Humanity is currently trying to maintain two sets of completely contradictory, mutually exclusive priorities. We need economic growth to keep getting richer or even just to stay as we are; but economic growth is largely achieved by the consumption of energy which fuels climate change. We need a growing population to fuel that economic growth; but the planet is overpopulated and that is a cause of climate change. We need people to CONSUME things to maintain that economic growth; but every act of consumption contributes to climate change.

I can't help feeling that the massive elephant in the room here is that humanity as a whole just needs to get a lot poorer, and all talk about addressing the crisis will be just that - talk - until someone is willing to say this out loud.

Now there's a lot of detail hidden in that as a whole. It's tempting to say that as inequality has spiralled so much over the last few decades, the entire question should be addressed by reducing the wealth of the super rich, stopping them using private jets etc. That's probably disingenuous, both in terms of practicality of implementation and the amount of emission reduction achieved. I'm certainly up for starting with that, but I also suspect that anyone living a halfway comfortable middle class life in an industrialised western country needs to accept getting poorer too. I'd also say there's a lower limit of living standard that shouldn't be expected to go any lower. We shouldn't expect to address this by making people who barely have enough to eat already have even less.

But these are political questions, not technological ones, and depend upon one's whole attitude to economic individualism vs collectivism, liberty, redistribution, state protection vs internationalism etc.

As it is - and as seems to be agreed to by most on this thread - the "getting poorer" will happen, but just in a random chaotic way that we don't have any control over, because no one wants to talk about it as an accepted reality.

What makes you think all of the U.K. will be habitable?

Water stress will be catastrophic. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/22/half-world-100-largest-cities-in-high-water-stress-areas-analysis-finds

Just read the book “I eat the stars” by Sarah Wilson. That answers your questions

Great book and very much worth reading @OneMoreBanana

www.theguardian.com/wellness/2026/jul/29/sarah-wilson-book-interview

There's hints that the Gulf Stream might collapse. If that happens, we will struggle to maintain any food production in this country, at which point people are more likely to leave than stay.

The flip side of shifting climate change is that Africa has had a lot more rain this year in the Sahara belt whilst we've been burning.

I wouldn't be so sure that Europe will keep attracting immigrants.

Yes the English will move to Scotland and Scotland will become independent finally. As well as sell water at high prices to English left behind.

Maybe all the wealthy hoarding resources need to be forced to give them up. No one should ever own an entire bloody island anyway

@Awkwardisfunny What is the maximum amount of land one person, or one family, should be allowed to own?

Completely agree! But I don’t even think we need to be poorer. We used to make things well. To last decades, lifetimes even. And then companies made them shit because then we have to buy again and again. To fuel the profit.

I want a return to proper stuff. Furniture which lasts a lifetime. Clothes and shoes which are reusable/ repairable. Food that doesn’t go out of date the minute you put it in the fridge. Phones and technology which lasts 10 years not 2.

This is not hard. But it’s not profitable if your aim is making a quick buck as opposed just sustaining a quality and respectable business which lasts generations.

Why?

I remember that! Often think back to it and know it will happen, we are going to be facing desperate scenes sooner rather than later

Ooh yes, thanks. I often listened to the podcast she did while the book was in development.

This is why subscription models are being introduced. It guarantees an ongoing source of income for the manufacturing companies. If you don't pay your subscription one month they'll cut off your fridge, TV, car, whatever so that it won't work. A diabolical method of squeezing every last penny out of a helpless population who will no longer enjoy private ownership.

i think that climate migrants will fall into the same category as those who move to escape poverty, lack of opportunity and shitty living situations. They wouldn’t be classed as asylum seekers - they are not escaping war or persecution - just their misfortune to have been born in a ‘shithole country’ where opportunities to improve their lives are close to zero. Rampant corruption and nepotism, lack of development, poor infrastructure, disease, poverty / no jobs, lack of access to water and food etc - to these will be added extremes of temperature and drought, which will exacerbate the shitty conditions that they live in as well as being reasons in themselves to move.

So not asylum seekers but economic / environmental migrants. And they are going to be moving in vast numbers. And we don’t have a system in place to deal with this at all.

Do we (in Europe) owe anything to the people in these countries because of colonisation and the after effects? Maybe, yes, at some level. But there isn’t enough money in the world to make up for what we did. And I personally didn’t engage in, approve of or (except indirectly) benefit from colonisation so why should I pay for it?

Oh, and @OneMoreBanana the government and the policy makers have absolutely ‘joined the dots’ : but if they were honest about the consequences of what’s going to happen there would be an absolute upheaval, it would make the fuss over the ‘small boats’ look like the proverbial teacup storm.

As it is - and as seems to be agreed to by most on this thread - the "getting poorer" will happen, but just in a random chaotic way that we don't have any control over, because no one wants to talk about it as an accepted reality.

Perhaps there will be a reassessment of what poverty is and of what our genuine needs are. I suspect that we will increasingly value the absolute basics such as food, water and medicine.

Climate is already a factor in mass migration. War over resources will increase and more people will be displaced. Whether we will displaced or others will be and want to come to the UK will depend on how the change in climate plays out.

I don’t think you are correct about emissions being primarily caused by the global North. My understanding was that the top emissions producers are China, the US and India.

I would still keep a hard line on immigration because how is having more people to manage in the global North going to help those countries be run properly to produce and export the food, water and energy that the globe will need?

I'll let the politicians figure that out. It's definitely 'less than the size of an island'. Ffs.

There will be an end to all migration, see Andy's words are pinching on the bums of the middle classes and the richer councils ALREADY , already and we are still in the beginning of accepting the men from the big < once small > boats...one can take their imagination and discussions anywhere....the options are many

few of the options: The EU collapses and no one gives fuck for the migrants and asylum seekers. Borders closed, armies protecting borders like in the Iron curtain times...

The UK stops giving asylum and just gives them tents ....

The UK keeps giving and goes on the IMF system's clients

Will work for 5 minutes until new companies come along. On their heads. Very short sighted.

History proves that there has never been an endless anarchy but dictatorships