YOUR VIEW: Consumerism and the migration migraine – News – Wicked Local Plymouth

What will happen in years to come as the climate change accelerates? The answers are based on human nature. Two processes will take place, each independent but attached at the hip.

President Trump has averted (political) noose and hoose(gow), so we can at last turn to a real big problem facing us and U.S. now and for the next century and more. I am referring to what is already a problem worldwide, expressing itself directly and indirectly in mass migrations of people. We hear that Latin Americans are entering the U.S. in droves and the president claims there’s no room. Aside from counterclaims that’s fake news and the U.S. actually has a labor shortage, what is worrying is that with climate change several things are happening to increase the pressure on doors of “first world” countries. A problem causing migraines of planetary proportions.

Already the intensity of storms has been increasing and shallow shores inundated. Louisiana is presently losing one football field per day of land to ocean! Bangladesh has it much, much worse, but is far away. Maps showing how far inland the ocean will encroach are actually scary. It will be a worldwide catastrophe. On top of ocean rising we also have temperature increases not limited to the planet’s desert belt, which includes northern Mexico and wide swaths of southern USA. We all know of the North Atlantic Current (NAC), aka North Atlantic Drift or Sea Movement. This is a powerful warm Atlantic current that extends the Gulf Stream northeastward and keeps northern Europe warm. The melting of the Greenland and North Polar ice could halt the NAC current and plunge eastern Canada and northern Europe into something akin to an Ice Age. Perhaps mitigated by the general temperature rise, but still expensive and destroying lives and civilization.

My take is that the increase in migrants’ flow into the U.S. is an indirect result of climate change, as the basic local problems in Central and South America have plagued our neighbors for a very long time. However in the Mid East the rise of Daesh (ISIS) was triggered by several years of drought in Syria and Iraq. The subsequent war caused migration to Europe. At the same time, the droughts in Africa (Azania) led to African migration into Europe at swamping levels. These are facts, not opinions. Australia and eastern European countries are already taking measures to reduce the inflow, and the social politics are shifting public opinion to the alt-right. In Europe the alt-right is remarkably akin to the Nazism of the 20th century, and American crazies are not far behind. For Europe I forecast a period of heavy bloodshed.

If the situation is already as described, what will happen in years to come as the climate change accelerates?

The answers are based on human nature. Two processes will take place, each independent but attached at the hip. One process is acceleration of the deliberate and sane reduction in warming drivers, such as creation of carbon dioxide, creation of methane, and other factors raising world heat retention. A sane and healthy subprocess will be the transformation of parts of the planetary desert belt into irrigated land enabling agriculture and resettling of people. Already Israel and some small parts of Africa have had success along those lines. Sa’udi Arabia is engaged in a large scale project vitalizing its northwest sector (‘Hejaz). Jordan too is importing desalinated water from Israel for its own projects. The transition from an oil economy to a renewables in underway. The more the conservatives will dominate the purse strings, the less conservation will exist in the economic and social spheres. That could change with consumerism. The question is what and who will win the race, the sane or the insane?

The second process is the insane one. Under pressure from a population hard hit by loss of land, loss of crops, loss of industrial capacity (before moving everything to high ground), and other losses, the tendency will be to take over territories from weaker others. Historically it will not be the first, nor the fifth time this process will have occurred. The last big ones caused the demise of the Roman Empire, and the Mongol scourge. The 1940s WW2 in Asia were over natural resources required by an expanding population at the expense of southeast Asia. In Europe it was over “lebensraum” or room to live in, at the expense of the Slav countries. There is nothing in our present civilization to prevent a similar apocalypse. Especially as the current migrants to Europe follow a religion that teaches world domination. World terrorism is caused by both the alt-right and alt-left, and in all honesty they seem congruent to me.

So what can consumerism contribute to all this? Remember that the core of consumerism is win-win for both sides in any deal or transaction or resolution of conflict.

Therefore it seems very good policy to assist the countries that are the sources of the migrations, to attain a better economy and peaceful society. Their need to migrate would diminish, and the rest of the world would gain a better trading partner. The internal violence borne of poverty and machismo would quell, making their societies more content. The U.S. would gain by gaining better control over the drug economy. All win-win deals for sure.

But not so fast with high hopes. That goal requires huge planning and the creation of cadres of people willing to hitch themselves to the cause. Idealism! Something that almost by definition is the domain of the young. Yes, the Latin American young in the Americas, the African young in Azania, the young everywhere. They have their enemies: rulers out solely for themselves and cronies, drug traffickers whose riches compete with whole countries’. All these require defeat while at same time fighting the causes of global warming.

In other words we need a global leadership as rapidly as possible, to make sure that most the sane actions everywhere are integrated rationally. Leadership, not government. Global gummint can only gum things up. Leadership is what’s needed. Leadership demands a leader. Global leadership demands an alliance of like leaders. Like it or not, that’s what humanity is built for, to follow leaders. The less autocratic the better, certainly no totalitarians. True leaders in the Democratic/Republican vein, leading not in vain.

So the leaders and leading team will use multiple crises to cancel each other. For instance, desalination of seas to create irrigation and potable water, sewage treatment to generate fertilizer for agro-use, solar and wind energy to avoid burning hydrocarbons, electric vehicles to replace the IC engine, and more, all already begun. With novel water and energy industry located in current desert regions, populations can immigrate and thrive. If led well and managed with wisdom, what is currently a world crisis can become the crises averted.

Just one question: Who and wherefrom the selfless but practical leaders around whom the alliance of leaders will coalesce?

Harry Shamir, Plymouth