The first wave has begun. The first wave are the wealthy escaping to a "better" life. You can see it in the house prices of Sydney. It is a form of laundering money from Asia, but it is also ensuring an escape from the pollution and environmental problems of their home environments.
It is becoming harder to hire middle management in China because the air pollution is a health concern for their kids. Nobody, who has a choice, wants to work there.
The second wave will be migrant workers (typically male).
The third wave will be relatives of (2).
The fourth wave will be chaos.
I am not talking referring to Australia's "boat people" problem. That is nothing. On a planet with 9 billion in 2050, only 2-3 billion are optimistically predicted to survive. It is not migration, it will be a human flood.
Here is the statistics for boat people from 2006 - 2009
No. of irregular arrivals by sea, by country 2006-09 (source)
| Country |
2006
|
2007
|
2008
|
2009
| 2010 | 2011 | Total |
| Australia |
60
|
148
|
161
|
2,726
| 6,555 | 4,565 | 14,215 |
| Greece |
9,050
|
19,900
|
15 300
|
10,165
| 1,765 | 1,030 | 57,210 |
| Italy |
22,000
|
19,900
|
36 000
|
8,700
| 4,348 | 61,000 | 152,821 |
| Malta |
1,800
|
1,800
|
2 700
|
1,470
| 28 | 1,574 | 9,372 |
| Spain |
32,000
|
18,000
|
13 400
|
7,285
| 3,632 | 5,443 | 79,760 |
| Yemen |
29,000
|
29,500
|
50 000
|
77,310
| 53,382 | 103,000 | 342,192 |
14, 000 into Australia in a 5 year period. That's nothing, the fact that it is discussed at all is purely just politics. But it won't remain that way. There are only so many you can put into detention.
Lately though, the statistics are picking up. (link) In 2014, by MAY there were 38,000 illegal immigrants going to Italy. Now, these figures are resulting from conflicts particularly in Libya. That however, needs to be put into another context. The Arab spring has resulted from climate change (link). Things may fluctuate but they are not going to get easier.
Let me make it clear, I couldn't blame them, if I was born into their situation I would do the same thing. Some of these people will have skills that will be much needed ... however some will be carrying drug resistant TB, Ebola and a host of other things.
The problem with disease is that to manage it, you have to contain it. You can't contain disease within a moving population. The final wave will come fast and they will not want to go back. It is obvious they are risking their lives now on those pitiful boats, so I am not trivializing it. But the global conflicts and food shortages will be much more pronounced and wide spread. Currently the one to watch is Ebola, if the African containment fails it will be seen in Europe.
You would think that Ebola needs to bridge the Sahara desert before breaking out North. Unfortunately, to emigrate to Europe, the way of circumventing the Sahara is by the Canary Islands. This is a huge problem because people wanting to emigrate to Europe via the African West Coast must go through the very areas now experiencing the Ebola outbreak.
Due to the Mediterranean sea there is no practical, humane way to stop the migration from Africa into Europe. In the short term this does not bode well for the southern states of the European Union. However, I do not want to be alarmist without good reason. As I state within diseases, I believe this will be seen in Southern Europe through migration, but due to its nature it will be contained.
So why mention it at all? I think it is worth watching for perhaps the social effect if it is reported in Europe. It could be an example of how effectively, or not, communities cope with a threat.
Human Migration
We have a historical reference for human migration in the western world, the great depression in the US. As well as modern ones from a study of male migration in Pakistan (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heat-stress-drives-climate-migration/)
The main factor for migration, is work, and consequently, money. Those that move have to do so because they are poor and uneducated. In 1930 people on farms were poor, but they were able to grow some food so they predominantly stayed where they were. Those without land and a job simply had to move to survive.
"The Children's Bureau estimated that by late 1932 a quarter of a million under the age of twenty-one were roaming the country."
In a land of 123 million that was 1 in 500 children were homeless. As bad as is it sounds that is not the full picture for our future. In 1930 only 50% of the population lived in cities. As the transients were predominantly from the cities that changes the rate of homeless children to 1 in 250 from city families.
But, for our future, there is an additional problem, the population density. In 1930 those living in city suburbs had a higher ratio of land to building. So for some, there was still the possibility of growing their own food albeit on a small scale. Now however, our urbanization has significantly trended towards bigger houses on smaller lots. We have taken on more and more debt to live in unsustainable environments.
I will take Los Angeles as an example.
In 1930 Los Angeles had a population of 1,238,048 but in 2010 it was 3,792,621. Currently at its most dense urban part of LA there is 42,000 people per sq mile.
Another example, in China Roughly 1 billion Chinese (or more than 90% of the population) live in only a little more than 30% of China's land area. The population density of this area is 354 people per square kilometer (Heilig 1999).
So there is a historical measure of the migration forces to be seen in the future. However, while some of the forces at work are similar, they will be compounded many times over. The implications for this is that the human migration will be vast.
The financial depression will not be short. Debt deleveraging will result in banks holding worthless assets.
- As mentioned elsewhere energy sources will continue to dwindle. So rebuilding or creating new infrastructure will be harder and harder. Energy is a major component in the price of food.
- The oceans are dying from lack of oxygen. Currently 1 billion people rely on fishing for their protein. It will take centuries to millennium for the situation to be fixed.
- The environmental factors will be much larger and deteriorating at an ever increasing rate. These are having and will continue to have a massive impact on food prices.
- Food shortages will be constant and increasing. Prices are going to rise and continue to rise.
- The people will be unskilled in any sort of practical knowledge. By that I mean our skillsets have moved further and further away from blue collar jobs. However, it will be those skills that will be most in demand.
- The transient people will be those whose debt levels forced them into work situations that did not allow them time to prepare. With the current levels of private debt this is an impossible situation.
Just looking at the last point. This is the private debt (US) picture as compared to GDP. The blue line is the household debt.
Unable to service their debts, and feed themselves they will have to leave their assets behind and move.
Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that transient migration will be primarily in the form of poor, uneducated people moving to higher latitudes. Keeping in mind that one can assume, from the geological record, that humans first moved North out of Africa, forced onward by climate changes. So migration will occur, because the people have no choice.
Unfortunately, the higher latitudes will not support it. There is simply not enough arable land. That is compounded by the lack of infrastructure. Building infrastructure takes time and energy. Depending on how quickly this happens will determine how effectively a land mass can transition to supporting a billion extra people. Given a pending and permanent energy crises structuring an area the size of, for example Siberia, seems a difficult proposition. Without any support government structure and safety net, it would be likely that security would be found in gangs.
Therein lies the problem with moving to a higher latitude to escape the heat, the problem will be both in the physical environment and the social one. From wikipedia, places economically disadvantaged have a higher rate of crime.
However, there is also a problem with staying where you are. From this article:
The northern southwest contained about 40,000 people mid-1200s, but only 30 years later it was mysteriously empty. The population may have been too large to feed itself as the climate changed, causing the society to collapse. As people began to leave it would have been difficult maintain the social unity required for the population to defend themselves and obtain new infrastructure.
That is, without sufficient preparedness, surviving in a place that people are exiting from will be difficult.
Solutions
Position yourself in a geographically secure location
For example Chile. You are not going to migrate over the Andes (easily). The truth is if you look at the terrain, it is a pretty well protected spot.
Wall yourself in to a community
Wall them out of your country
Pay your neighbors to deal with it. Depending on who your neighbors are, this choice may be the most immoral.
Finally, give them the basic tools through microloans to make a living at home. Mid to southern Africa is sustainable with moderate global warming. See where to live.
Only one of these choices actually reduces suffering, and maybe the best solution for stemming some of the tide. But it will not stop it. There appears to be no easy answers here. Immigrant activists have a valid moral high ground, but does not change the fact that migration will far exceed societies ability to cope with it.
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