Climate refugees, elephant in the living room in Copenhagen?

Since there is so much titillating news over the last few day about those leaked (or hacked) e-mails and documents calling into question the whole scientific underpinning of the so-called global warming (aka climate change) “crisis,” I thought this “elephant in the living room” reference was a bit overblown.  I suspect the real discussions will center around, not climate refugees, but, well now, how do we salvage this whole mess!

In any case, here is just a bit from one of the latest alarmist screeds on “climate refugees,” a subject that is not expected to be formally addressed in Copenhagen to the chagrin of these authors.

According to this Australian on-line journal, millions upon millions of “climate refugees,” that I notice are quietly being called “environmental refugees,” are expected to be swarming the planet by by 2050.

Until there is a significant movement calling for recognition of climate refugees – under the UN climate convention or another international governance instrument – the issue will continue to be swept under the carpet. This will not make the problem go away. Estimates of likely displacement continue to grow. Professor Norman Myers, who has been researching the topic for decades, suggests that, without serious action to reduce greenhouse emissions, we could be facing the prospect of perhaps 200 million climate refugees by mid century.

Check out this new verbiage we can all expect to see creeping into the mainstream lexicon.

…..campaigns for climate justice for those most threatened by environmental changes.

Climate justice—don’t you just love it!   And then, note that they have recognized the hole they dug with the “global warming” mumbo-jumbo and they then went to “climate change” and now its just “environmental change” we in wealthy countries are responsible for!

Unbelievable gobbledegook regarding climate change: Global warming will bring more prostitution

This story was on Drudge yesterday and although most of it has nothing to do with the supposed millions of new refugees being created by global warming and the whole new push at the United Nations to recognize them as refugees who will need to be resettled (see our Climate Refugee category), I couldn’t resist posting this to show how nutty all this has become.

Entitled, ‘Climate change pushes poor women to prostitution, dangerous work,’ it begins:

The effects of climate change have driven women in communities in coastal areas in poor countries like the Philippines into dangerous work, and sometimes even the flesh trade, a United Nations official said.

Suneeta Mukherjee, country representative of the United Nations Food Population Fund (UNFPA), said women in the Philippines are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the country.

“Climate change could reduce income from farming and fishing, possibly driving some women into sex work and thereby increase HIV infection,” Mukherjee said during the Wednesday launch of the UNFPA annual State of World Population Report in Pasay City.

In the Philippines, small brothels usually pop up near the coastal areas where many women perform sexual services for transient seafarers. Often, these prostitutes are ferried to bigger ships by their pimps.

At the end of the article, there is a mention of the eagerly anticipated increased migration of refugees, and the UNFPA makes the following recommendation:

Improve sex-disaggregation of date related to migration flows that are influenced by environmental factors and prepare now for increases in population movements resulting from climate change.

Right!  As soon as we figure out what “Improve sex-disaggregation of date” is, we will get right on it!  Does it have something to do with more prostitutes?

Australia: working all the angles to get in

Here is an informative piece from Australia a country which is going through some serious national soul searching about that ship being held at sea with 70 plus Sri Lankan (maybe Tamil Tigers) “refugees” on board, at least I think the standoff is continuing.

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

On a trip to Pakistan earlier this year, I was amazed at how sophisticated the knowledge of Western migration rules was among the locals. One postgraduate student regaled me with the minute details of the Canadian points system, which he felt was more relaxed than Australia’s.

A taxi driver lamented the growing barriers to entering Britain, which was once seen as a relatively easy option. A considerable number asked about gaining entry by claiming political asylum. Australia was universally seen as highly desirable but difficult to enter. New Zealand was often seen as the gateway country.

It is a pattern is likely to be repeated throughout Asia and an indication of how desperate many people are to reach the developed world. It’s also an indication that as soon as there is a perception of a weak spot in the migration rules, you can bet knowledge of it spreads like wildfire.

The two biggest news stories relating to immigration this year relate to international students and asylum seekers.

Check out the many angles the desparate are using to get into a first world country, but place this scary prospect in the back of your mind as the Copenhagan global warming conference approaches.

If even modest predictions regarding climate change come to light, the debate over what constitutes an environmental refugee will also heat up, possibly further extending the category.

Environmental refugees!  Ahhhhhh!

Help!!! We Maldivians will drown or become refugees!

As we get closer to the big global warming pow-wow in Copenhagen, you know the one where Obama will likely cede our sovereignty to the third world (while we dither over health care and the war against FOX News), we will be seeing more stories like this one from the Maldives (see map of Asia, here) warning us of the dire consequences of “climate refugees.”

NEW DELHI — The people of the Maldives face the prospect of life in a “climate refugee camp,” President Mohamed Nasheed warned Thursday as he urged rich countries to clinch an effective global warming treaty.

Calling the South Asian island chain a “frontline state” in the fight against climate change, Nasheed said global warming threatened to submerge his low-lying country and “kill our people” unless action was taken urgently.

“We have a written history of more than 2,000 years and we don’t want to trade our paradise for a climate refugee camp,” he told a climate change summit in New Delhi.

Last weekend, Nasheed’s government staged a cabinet meeting underwater — complete with ministerial scuba gear — to highlight the plight of the archipelago whose atolls stand a mere 1.5 metres above sea level.

The president stunned the world last year when he announced he wanted to buy a new homeland to relocate the population of the Maldives in the event that damage from rising sea levels became too great.

“What happens to the Maldives today happens to the rest of world tomorrow,” he warned Thursday.

In 2007, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that an increase in sea levels of just 18 to 59 centimetres (seven to 24 inches) would make the Maldives virtually uninhabitable by 2100.

And, boo hoo, Mohamed Nasheed has no money to get to the conference, but didn’t he just say he wanted to buy land to move his country?  Not to worry the European socialists will pay his way to Denmark because they need him as a poster boy—we must save the Muslim Maldives!

Last month the Maldives announced it had no money to pay for Nasheed to attend the Copenhagen summit, but Denmark has said it will fund him as his participation is considered essential.

But, get this!   A world renowned expert on sea levels travelled to the Maldives and concluded there was no rise in sea level there for the last 50 years and the citizens had nothing to worry about.  The Maldivian government refused to let him demonstrate his findings.   From the UK Telegraph:

When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he (Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change) launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown.

A world government on the way

It’s all about money, the redistribution of wealth to the third world and the creation of a world government.   Here is what Lord Christopher Monkton told an American audience just this week:

At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.

I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.

How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he’ll sign it.

I’m making a new category “climate refugees” because surely this will not be the last of these ludicrous stories.  I’m going back now and be sure to post my previous reports on climate refugees to the new category.   Think about it, the radical leftists and communists have found the perfect melding of two major issues through which they can control the world with guilt—refugees and environment.

Sierra Club sounds downright gleeful about ‘global warming refugees’

Last night I spent some time in a sort of stream of consciousness exercise that took me from the death of  Ted Kennedy (a wealthy man who liked to take your money and give it to the poor, but wasn’t interested in distributing his money directly to the poor immigrant), to the assasination of his brother by Jordanian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan, to Bill Ayers and Jeff Jones dedicating their Weatherunderground screed to Sirhan Sirhan (among others), to Jeff Jones and the Apollo Alliance funded by the Tides Foundation, to the Apollo Alliance writing the stimulus bill to help redistribute your wealth to their pet projects, to the SEIU and its connections to Apollo and Geroge Soros (who likes to create interlocking groups to fool the public), to supposed environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC and its heiress president) that sit on the Apollo Alliance board, and the stream goes on.

Eventually I will tell you all those connections and how refugees and immigrants play into the whole tangled web to “change” America—really to bring down America as we know it.

This morning I just want to tell you about how the Sierra Club is in bed with unions and how they justify their open borders position and their union supporting position to members questioning what the heck they are doing.

Here is a link to a column by “Mr. Green” at Sierra magazine.  Note the first question from a reader on June 9 was about the Sierra Club in bed with unions (btw Sierra Club President, Carl Pope sits on the Apollo Alliance Board with the likes of SEIU, which I have previously told you is helping organize Somalis to disrupt work places).

Then in March another reader asks Mr. Green this question:

Hey Mr. Green,

Why does the Sierra Club refuse to take a stand on illegal migration and historically high legal immigration? The sheer number of immigrants is having a negative effect on the environment and the amount of resources consumed, not to mention the social costs. Why is the Club being politically correct when there is a clear relationship between population and environmental balance? –Michael in Ashburn, Virginia

Here is Mr. Green’s answer (non-answer!) where he tries to deflect the members attention by suggesting the member was a bad anti-immigrant person and then goes on to sound like he is actually pleased about the latest fad of the refugee industry—global warming refugees!

While some of my environmentally minded readers dread any reduction in procreation [Edit:  LOL! the Sierra Club is all about telling white people to stop having babies but I can't wait to see them tell African immigrants, like the Somalis, to stop having 6 kids and more], which would also reduce the number of immigrants, others, like you, want to shut the immigrants out. I just hope you’re not in favor of that environmentally destructive boondoggle of a fence they’re building on our border with Mexico.

The simplest answer to your question about the Sierra Club’s immigration policy is that the Club’s members voted overwhelmingly some time ago to remain neutral on this issue. [Edit: It is a very long story about how the Sierra Club took millions of dollars in donations to shut them up on immigration, ant that is why Mr. Green isn't telling this reader the full story.]  Many are convinced that it is more helpful in the long run to work to help change the sinister circumstances that drive so many people to immigrate, including poverty, lack of education, lack of women’s rights, and lack of family-planning options.

A less-known driver of immigration is environmental devastation, which has produced millions of refugees; they now number more than 10 million per year. By the year 2000, there were 25 million such refugees, actually higher than the number of people who had fled for political reasons. Among the environmentally related causes of displacement are floods, landslides, water shortages, and desertification caused by deforestation and overcultivation, not to mention climate change and the more intense devastation caused by the more intense storms brought on by global warming.

While most Americans have gone about their lives since the late 1960’s finding work, buying a home, raising a family and just taking care of life, a cabal of radical Leftists has been quietly putting together a new government structure that aims to wipe out borders, redistribute wealth, take large businesses (willingly it seems) under government control and to be run by a group of Ivy League so-called intellectuals who are really a bunch of  rich elitist snobs.

They’ve created a goliath!  They’ve got the Religious Left,  the mainstream media, environmental groups, open borders groups, powerful unions, businesses like Wal-mart and Microsoft, ethnic advocacy groups and the list goes on—arrayed against the so-called “mob” attending town halls and tea parties.  Have faith, just as David did, the little guy can still win in the end.

Keeping up with the latest refugee racket: climate change refugees

This article today on Drudge reminded me that I had meant to tell you about Refugees International’s new super-dooper Center for the Study of Climate Displacement.   This is going to be the hottest new craze in the world refugee “crisis.”  Nevermind that man has been moving due to changes in the climate throughout human history.  Just ask those Neanderthals what they thought of that pesky Ice Age.

Here is how the Reuters article begins:

ADDIS ABABA, Aug 24 (Reuters) – African leaders will ask rich nations for $67 billion per year to mitigate the impact of global warming on the world’s poorest continent, according to a draft resolution seen by Reuters on Monday.

Ten leaders are holding talks at African Union (AU) headquarters in the Ethiopian capital to try to agree a common stance ahead of a U.N. summit on climate change in Copenhagen in December.

Experts say Africa contributes little to the pollution blamed for warming, but is likely to be hit hardest by the droughts, floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels forecast if climate change is not checked.

The draft resolution, which must still be approved by the 10 leaders, called for rich countries to pay $67 billion annually to counter the impact of global warming in Africa.

Instead of questioning this extortion project, we have groups like Refugees International playing right into it.   Mark my words, the West is going to “owe” the world either big bucks or open borders (or both!) because of  bogus global warming created, they claim,  by greedy white people.  Refugees International wants in on the bash-the-West racket and to raise funds from the “crisis.”

This is the opening paragraph of their press release published just before President Ken Bacon died recently.

Washington, DC — Refugees International announced plans to establish the Ken and Darcy Bacon Center for the Study of Climate Displacement today. The Center will use Refugees International’s successful advocacy model to work towards stronger policies and structures that meet the needs of the tens of millions of people expected to be displaced by climate change in the coming decades.

There is more here including links to climate “crisis” stories.  We told you about other climate refugee stories previously here , here and here.

You gotta hand it to them.  They have now figured out how to capitalize on two of the left’s money-raising schemes—refugees and climate change.   And, they have managed with this project to wrap into one neat package two major areas that International Leftists are aiming for—open borders and the redistribution of wealth.

More of the Climate Change Refugee mumbo-jumbo

I’ll have to just direct you to this publication to read the article, “The Climate Refugee Challenge,” yourself because, although in English, somehow this French publication won’t let me copy sections of  the post.    Suffice it to say, the crisis dujour of Climate Change Refugees roaming the world and looking for a home in your town is moving on up on Leftists’ to-do list around the world.  Read about it here.  Pay attention because they are working on securing funding and developing a legal structure.

And, then as I pointed out before and now we have proof, the Enviro-socialists have been advised to drop the phrase ‘global warming’ which confuses too many people who have been freezing their tushies off over the last few winters.

Earth Day plus one: more ‘climate change’ refugees on the move

And, surprise, surprise, they want to move to neighborhoods in the First World.  Our friends at Blue Ridge Forum sent this to us yesterday, but am just getting to it this morning and don’t have time to do it justice.   But, I want you to see this excellent (and humorous) article at American Thinker by Brian Sussman entitled, “Sinking Islands or Stinking Islands?”

Sussman begins:

The headline on Monday read, “Climate refugees in Pacific flee rising seas“. Boy did the editors get this one wrong. A more accurate caption would have been, “Jesse Jackson-like shake-down gets tribe taken off tropical trash heap”.

A focus of the story was the tiny South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. Apparently New Zealand responded to the phony cries of a few goo-goo activists, and is now convinced that unless the Tuvaluans are allowed to immigrate, they’ll soon be blubbing with the fish. Of course, the calculable cause of this sinkage is a steadily rising sea fed by anthropogenic global warming.

Rubbish. Literally.

He concludes that the ‘crisis’ of a rising sea level is a myth perpetuated for political reasons by Al Gore and his friends around the world.  Read the whole article!

So, while Mr. Gore conveniently lifted certain facts from the record when creating his film, he will no doubt champion the recent evacuations as prophetic vindication. Tuvalu is being decamped while New Zealand is being played like a cheap ukulele.

This incident has been diabolically concocted by global warming zealots, who are recruiting convenient poster children, so that when they convene in Copenhagen for the big climate change powwow this December, they’ll be able to stick another sharp pin in their global warming voodoo doll.

Here is an archive of all the posts we have written about “climate change” refugees.  I wish I had time to say more, because this is a subject near and dear to my heart since my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees are in environmental studies and  I worked as an environmental lobbyist.  I KNOW these zealots!

Later I’ll make a new category here at RRW for “climate change” refugees because I have a sneaking feeling we will be hearing more about this hot topic.

Get ready for “climate refugees!”

I told you about this incredible campaign back in December, but there is more today.  Participants in the global warming crusade (notice now that the climate is cooling, “climate change” is the operative phrase) are pushing for a redefinition of ‘refugees’ to accomodate their apocalyptic view that in a few short years we will have millions of people escaping “climate change” who need to be resettled in your community.

I don’t have the time or patience to analyze this lengthy article published at something called the International Relations and Security Network, so read the whole thing.    

The problem of defining ‘climate refugee.’

Albeit popular in the press, the term “climate refugee” enjoys no legal authority. The 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees is the core treaty of international refugee law. Article 1 defines a refugee as any person who “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.” The definition does not afford binding legal protection to environmentally displaced persons, and focuses instead on political refugees and refugees of violent conflict.

A 1967 Protocol later amended the 1951 Convention and removed geographic and time constraints, rendering the convention a more universal document. Climate refugees, however, remained outside the legal framework. The UN world recognizes this dissimilarity and employs a verbose working definition instead – “environmentally induced migrant.”

The result puts humanitarians and environmentalists compassionately at odds. Humanitarians argue their limited resources are already overstretched. Environmentalists note that climate change and consequently environmental displacement are byproducts of human-led industrialization. Sheltering those victimized by climate change is a moral and security imperative.

We will need new funding and resettlement schemes (no doubt!).

Eventually, to avoid the most adverse of scenarios, resettlement and funding schemes will be needed. Civil society is leading the charge. Due to their proximity to the Pacific islands, the governments of Australia and New Zealand have become early targets of pressure.

The right to resettlement, however, begs a fundamental question: How does the international community distinguish between victims of climate change and casualties of unsustainable development? Professor Biermann explains that although this distinction may be useful in the developed world, elsewhere it is unfitting. “It is difficult to say for developing countries [...] you can’t tell the Egyptians its your problem that you settled in the Nile [Delta], because this what they have been doing for the last 5,000 years.

“[That] is why we make the distinction between climate refugees and other refugees – because of the moral link between causation and consequence. Rich industrialized countries, they have been responsible for the largest part of this problem.”

Refugees are not a blessing.  Really?   I thought diversity strengthened communities.

Any resettlement, nevertheless, will likely be onerous. Displaced populations may be forced to take up residence in foreign countries, straining cultural traditions and in certain cases the very existence of their national identities. Refugees, never mind their genesis, are rarely regarded as a blessing. They necessitate costly assistance and their presence – albeit through no fault of their own – frequently engenders political strife with local communities, all the more reason for drafting resettlement schemes early on.

As I said, get ready.

UN Security Council briefed on worldwide refugee problems

Yesterday, UN High Commissioner for Refugees(UNHCR) Antonio Guterres briefed the UN Security Council on refugees and displaced persons worldwide.    He said the number is growing (is it ever not growing?) due to conflicts, climate change(?) and economic recession.

The number of refugees worldwide had increased to more than 11 million over the last two years, and the number of people displaced internally as a result of conflict to some 22 million, António Guterres, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said in a briefing to the Security Council today.

He said the increase in the number of refugees under the mandate of his Office -– not including the 4.6 million Palestinian refugees under the mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) -– had increased primarily due to the situations in Iraq and Somalia. Other sources of the growing number of refugees included Afghanistan, Sudan, Chad, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Other causes of displacement besides conflict included climate change induced natural disaster, drought, rising sea levels and the current global economic recession, he said. “Conflict, climate change and extreme deprivation will interrelate, strengthening each other as causes of displacement.” As there was no legal framework addressing the situation of people displaced internally by persecution or armed conflict, there was a need to discuss seriously the new forms of forced displacement, emerging protection gaps and possible forms of collective response.

The report on the briefing is a long one, but quite informative.  Here are a few excerpts I found interesting.

The representative of the UK, Karen Pierce, told the gathering that the UK supported UNRWA (see Judy’s post on UNRWA and Hamas, then read on).

Karen Pierce (UK), echoing the High Commissioner’s admiration for UNRWA’s workers in the Gaza Strip, called for immediate humanitarian access in light of the immense suffering caused by the escalation of violence in Gaza and southern Israel. The United Kingdom called for an immediate ceasefire and condemned acts of terror and violence against civilians.

The Russian representative basically said that internally displaced people are the sovereign nations problem (so stay out of Russia):

Underlining the necessity of drawing a distinction between UNHCR providing assistance to refugees and to internally displaced persons, he noted that, for the latter group, interventions were only allowed if the relevant country had made a request in advance. Providing assistance to internally displaced persons was primarily the responsibility of the country concerned.

The Chinese representative mentioned “environmental degradation” as a contributing factor in creating refugees and internally displaced people.  China has such a fabulous environomental record (not!) that you wonder why someone representing China should even mention environmental degradation, but the UN is a place for talkers.

Indeed, conflict, political turmoil, economic stagnation, poverty and backwardness were the main causes that made the refugee problem intractable, in addition to environmental degradation and security challenges, which also exacerbated displacement.

The Libyan representative weighed in on Gaza (of course!) likening the Israelis to Nazis:

He went on to recount the disturbing events in Gaza, where the civilian Palestinian population was being displaced due to collective punishment with Nazi-like overtones. The people of Gaza could not flee and had no option but death. The Security Council remained silent while those preventing it from shouldering its responsibilities were evincing tacit approval of Israel’s operations.

Mr. Guterres wrapped up with his praise for UNWRA:

Expressing appreciation for the statements by the representative of the United Kingdom and others who had expressed concern about the situation in Gaza, he said he hoped the situation of displacement could be addressed in a concrete and comprehensive manner as soon as possible. UNRWA was doing laudable work under extremely difficult circumstances in and around Gaza. UNHCR’s main concern, from the perspective of its mandate, was that the enclave’s population could not flee, which made the humanitarian imperative that much more pressing.

But, Mr. Guterres they could be resettled to Muslim countries, could they not!