Climate change is making such harm that it seems that it is to blame for everything (and of course we do not like this). However, in this case, I think we are also witnessing the mid-term effects of heavy use of technologies brought by the Green Revolution (including pesticides).
2
you import coffee from Peru. That's a lot of greenhouse gases. And how many rain forest are cut to plant coffee plantations?
you sure it's climate change? Not due to the fact that Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world?
1
The total of 1.4 million migrants over three decades from Mexico and Central America sounds like a lot, but it works out to an average of 16 per day per country. Hardly a torrent.
Climate change is a reality of our world. We created it & millions of others are suffering from it. It created the Syrian refugee crisis & now the Central American migrant crisis. Trump's actions are making it much worse.
3
Beto O'Rourke has been speaking about this issue since the Texas Senate campaign. It is good that the media is finally picking up this issue which has resonated in Texas for a long time.
1
explain how flooding in tens of millions of immigrants who will use 10 times the energy per capita than the country they came from will mitigate global warming
3
I teach climate science and live in a gas-rich town with lots of petroleum people as friends and neighbors. I want to present students with a fair picture of people and opinions opposing the protection of climate. Like @John Galt here, most people who oppose taking steps to reduce emissions are really unable to engage on the science. The oil people are in the First Law business. Yet applications of the First Law of Thermodynamics to climate leaves them cold. They want to talk about distant climate regimes that are utterly irrelevant to modern climate change. They want to discuss climate changes that 7 billion humans would not survive as being normal. In their view the small changes we face are trivial.
I beg climate skeptics who know science to present me with a list of propositions supporting liassez faire climate policy that go beyond @John Galt's trolling. Certainly there is more to denial than the gotcha party at Heartland, Climate Depot and wattsupwiththat. They are not winning arguments with the National Academy of Sciences or the US Global Change Research Program except among audiences who are committed to ideology above facts.
3
now climate change is a reason to seek asylum.
1
I think we are getting too strict with these people. Most of the time, the United States has welcomed immigrants. I do not think these people should be able to get welfare.
It appears to be fashionable to blame everything on climate change. If we stick with recent statistics, 80% of the people claiming refugee status are probably economic refugees. They are being coached to claim refugee status to game the system. A reasonable argument could be made that it is unelected liberal Federal Judges in the 9th circuit that are causing the refugee crisis and not climate change. It is a shame that all branches of our gov't (Executive, Legislative & Judicial) & the media are allowing bias to influence their decisions & reporting.
2
I’d like to see much more coverage from Central America, particularly from Honduras.
Let’s hear from the Hondurans themselves.
It would probably be clear that we could do a whole lot better in helping that country out.
After all, we facilitated the current regime into power. Let’s hear more about their plight please.
19
Trump is cutting off aid to Central America for one reason, he wants more migrants, the more desperate the better, for him to slam home his anti immigration pitch for re-election.
Honduras was the first country to recognize the new Jerusalem capital in Israel.
If they’re our puppet, they’d cooperate on immigration and development policies. The problem is that Trump doesn’t want they’re cooperation. He wants more caravans.
13
Population growth is changing history. In the age of Google, individuals have access to fairly reliable statistics on population growth in various countries.
Syria, for example, experienced 3% per annum growth for decades prior to its recent civil war. According to the law of exponential growth, that implies a doubling of population every 23 years. Such growth is not sustainable for long.
Something had to give. A war over diminishing resources characterized as a war among various religious groups is what happened. The result was a stream of refugees into Europe supplementing an ongoing stream from Africa.
This is part of the reason for a lurch rightward in European politics, the rise of Victor Orban in Hungary, the popularity of Marine LePen in France, the Brexit vote in Great Britain. The economy of Europe is on shaky grounds, and it is hard to predict how this will work out.
In the US, there were voices of liberals from the past which were duly ignored. These included the authors of an excellent 1972 book, the Limits to Growth. This book provided quasi-mathematical models of various outcomes to continued population growth. The one constant in these models is that unless societies adopt family planning, death rates must eventually rise to balance birth rates.
The rational voices were ignored. So less moderate voices arose, and finally Donald Trump was elected.
Trump is a terrible president, but he responds to a reality that liberals have ignored for too long.
14
This is the tip of a world wide iceberg. As warm regions become uninhabitable, people will flee to more temperate zones. And it will become a stampede as conditions worsen. We're all in for some nasty times ahead. And noone in our government appears to be planning for anything.
17
This is an important article but the message and facts of this piece are somehow not being recognized by the Trump Administration.
The U.S. needs to use its enormous economic power and technology to mobilize the nations of the world to both assist the peoples of the Earth in adapting to the dramatic changes in climate and its negative impact on the human habitat and to assist in the economics of shifting the World away from fossil fuels, (a huge economic challenge that we appear to be underestimating). This is the most stressful condition that our species has experienced in modern times since the World Wars of the 20th Century.
The Administration, at its own peril, has missed the significance of climate change and the challenges of surviving the catastrophic impact of this phenomena both in the misery of our fellow humans and the global food supply.
This is a border-less crisis that requires a global policy response. The food crisis and economic dislocation will impact both rich and poor. Clearly, it is a time for a major change in climate policy.
I have joined Dr. James Powell in calling for international investment in very low cost electricity created by beaming solar energy from space-based satellites that can beam to electric grids virtually any place on Earth.
China is actively developing this form of power but they will also have to develop Powell's Maglev launch system to bring down launch cost low enough to make beamed power economically practical.
5
So....when my husband and I both lost jobs a few years back and the economy was in the toilet...and our jobs outsourced and off shored....we had the RIGHT to walk into Canada or fly to Sweden, and then scream ASYLUM! when caught, and then get to stay forever on their welfare and free health care systems? did I get that correctly here?
14
@Concerned Citizen, I don't think you can claim asylum anywhere in the world because of your economic circumstances. I know you can't in the U.S.
According to international asylum law, you can only claim asylum if you've been persecuted because of your race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.
Sorry.
10
@Concerned Citizen Argumentum ad absurdum. When you lose a job in the U.S., you face uncomfortable times before finding another job. And, you have a reasonable chance of legal emigration to Canada (I did it) or Sweden. When your sole means of livelihood disappears in Honduras, you face starvation and no replacement livelihood. There's a big difference.
3
The Irish came to this country fleeing poverty and hunger during the "potato famine" in the 19th century. Much of America reviled them as Papists, drunks and thugs. Now the Irish are thoroughly assimilated, the heart of the American mainstream.
Human beings have moved around the globe since they began to walk upright on two legs. That's how Europeans came to live in and dominate North, Central and South America over the course of the past few hundred years -- have we all forgotten that somehow?
In the 21st century, people can move from place to place more readily than ever before. Climate change, economic inequality, war, rampant crime... all of these will prompt them to shuttle from rotten conditions in Point A to the chance of a better life in Point B.
The question is whether we will learn to turn the movement of people into an opportunity, or self-destruct in a futile effort to resist it.
At the moment, the United States seems hellbent on doing the latter.
32
@chambolle: This is the best comment on immigration I've read in awhile! If only our dear leaders could see things this way.
2
@chambolle There is no opportunity here. As the globe warms, our bloated population will become more unsustainable than it is now. And the pressures on our lifestyle will become irresistible. Enjoy Bladerunner.
7
Strangely, the wall may be Republicans one response to climate change. Not ideal as the only action, but one that will eventually become more popular as the effects of climate change grow. Walled worlds of science fiction coming soon to places other than Israel.
1
Well since you admit there’s a shortage of workers there why are they coming here?
2
@John, because they can't make a living. Crops fail, and farmers can't pay them. As the article says, the current joke in Honduras is that the laborer caravans will soon become the farmer caravans as farms fail.
2
In 1950 Honduras had a population ~1.5 million. It is now ~9.5 million. Climate change (or u.s. involvement) may indeed be playing a role in the problems of Honduras, but to not mention the astonishing population growth of that country (as well as the rest of that part of the world) in the reasons driving the mass exodus toward the u.s. may be PC but does not reflect good journalism or tell the whole story. No economic or political system exists that could possibly cope with that level of population growth. They have literally bred themselves out of being a viable country. We can take down the southern border and it will not alleviate the problems of Central America, there are just too many people. However, being their population relief valve will certainly impact this country.
29
1. And what side of the political spectrum cinsistently attaxks any and all contraception, pray tell?
2. And did anybody ask to “take down the Southern border?” Who exactly said this, please?
10
@Al
The fact that these people are using our country as a release valve for their out-of-control overpopulation should serve as a dire warning to American citizens.
If our collective hackles aren’t raised knowing that millions of foreign nationals are illegally ‘sneaking’ into our country year after year, there’s something drastically wrong with our collective survival instincts.
According to a recent Yale study, there are over 20 million illegal aliens residing in this country right now... not including their ‘anchor offspring’ insurance policies. The American citizenry ignores this at our own peril.
23
@Robert. No idea what your point is. The u.s. is not responsible for family planning in other countries. Perhaps you're talking about the Catholic Church? Or you could support planned parenthood, as many of us do, if that is an important issue. If you support letting everyone in who claims asylum, and it is approaching 100,000/month, that basically means no border.
7
“...sneaking into the United States”.
Anyone “sneaking” into this country illegally should be immediately deported. It’s simply unbelievable and outrageous that the United States, a first world sovereign nation, cannot defend its own borders. Americans are already spending $Billions every year subsidizing this illegal immigration racket, along with the birthright citizenship racket.
When will our elected officials do their jobs and and put an end to this brazen exploitation of our citizenry. It ain’t rocket science!
20
This just in: per our laws and our treaties, if you walk up to the border, turn yourself in peaceably, and request asylum, you are not sneaking in. Per our laws and our treaties, you have a right to ask, to be heard, and to be treated halfway decently while you wait for a decision.
Sorry you object to our laws and even our Constitution, which is where “birthright citizenship,” is established. But as you lot so often say when gun cintrol comes up, if no like, change Constitution. Good luck.
Incidentally, know what REALLY isn’t rocket science?
The fact of global warming and climate change.
17
@Robert
Per international law, anyone seeking asylum must do so in the first safe country they enter. According to my map, Robert. That country is Mexico!
8
@Robert
And by the way, Robert....our ‘birthright citizenship law’ was NEVER intended for the benefit of illegal foreign trespassers who’ve been brazenly abusing the law for decades. The sooner that law is corrected, amended, or overturned....the better.
10
Yeah, another faux tie in to the global warming hysteria sweeping through the social media like the Coffee Rust did in 1890 as it went from Ceylon to Africa and then to Central America, affecting Arabica coffee plants low in caffeine.
uh, Starbucks is raising prices as a result....o.k.
6
Please, please, please! The temperature may have risen half a degree - and many thousands are abandoning their farms, their families and their livelihoods to flee to the US? Your assertion is simply not credible, and sadly fails to reflect the high standards of journalism to which the Times used to adhere. You mention civil unrest, governmental incompetence, and lack of educational and economic opportunity - and these are the key drivers, not a fraction of a degree or the outlook for coffee yields in 2050.
21
By the way, this sort of thing is EXACTLY what CIA and various agencies within the Defense Department have forecast.
Sorry that so many Trumpists wax indignant at reality, but can’t aay that I am in any way surprised.
10
@Robert
So how did you get the CIA forecasts?
2
I believe the CIA forecasts to which Robert refers are available to the public. Also, it is common knowledge that the Pentagon, our military, considers climate change one of the greatest threats to our national security.
But stocks keep going up so nobody cares.
4
From Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath":
"And a homeless hungry man, driving the road with his wife beside him and his thin children in the back seat, could look at the fallow fields which might produce food but not profit, and that man could know how a fallow field is a sin and the unused land a crime against the children...."
It is in our own best interest to help these people in the places where they now live. It will prevent unnecessary migration, and it will give us experience sustaining agriculture when it is our time for change.
24
We shared a similar story in a documentary by twelve year old Edelsin Menendez, whose family has grown coffee for generations in Nicaragua. Climate change has greatly impacted the family’s coffee production, and Edelsin’s older sister can’t afford her school tuition. The immediate impact of the diminished coffee yields will permanently injure this family - as she’ll be qualified not to teach, but a lifetime of manual labor. BYkids films are broadcast on Public Television and shared in schools in conversation with teachers and teaching materials. Readers can bring this story to kids at home and in classrooms from the following link.
https://bykids.org/films/my-beautiful-nicaragua/
6
I visited the country of Malawi about three years ago. While I was there the country was experiencing a drought that it had rarely experienced which negatively effected crops of maize which Malawians use as a staple in their diet. Climate change was clearly the culprit here. Over the next several decades we may see mass movement of climate change refugees relocating to survive. The longer we are held hostage to climate deniers in power, the worse of we will all be.
19
@Wesley. Malawi like most of the developing world has seen its population explode in the last 75 years. From ~3 million in 1950 to almost 20 million now. A drought that might have been tolerated in 1950 will be catastrophic at 2019 population levels. Climate change is a problem, outbreeding the ability of the environment to support an over populated country even under the best of circumstances is a far bigger one. The elephant in the room can no longer be ignored.
10
Rain forest destruction is one of the drivers of climate change. The author failed to mention that the land being cultivated was formerly rain forests. When you look at the pictures accompanying the article, remember that the cleared and cultivated land was once very efficient CO2 absorbing forest.
Throughout the world forests and rain forests in particular are being and have been down for agriculture, pulp and lumber. The current rate of deforestation is about 18 million acres per year year. For scale, New York is about 30 million acres and New Jersey about 4.5. (see: https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/various-deforestation-facts.php).
Deforestation is nothing new, one of the reasons for the Plymouth colony was to ship lumber back to a largely deforested England. It was once said that a squirrel could jump tree-to-tree from Madrid to Barcelona. Central American mahogany was an early export back to Europe.
The migrants from Honduras may be fleeing climate change but many have (like the rest of us) helped accelerate it.
17
I am struggling to reconcile this story with other sources that state that Honduran coffee production is growing rapidly following planting of rust resistant trees, to the point of contributing to depressed global prices (e.g. https://www.ft.com/content/307f5012-f54b-11e7-8715-e94187b3017e). Is this story about climate change reducing the ability to grow coffee in Honduras, or about the fate of small farms in face of changes in the industry (which might include climate change as reducing resilience of small farmers who can’t move farms or replant with new varieties easily), even as coffee production as a whole grows? The desire to make this all about climate (and I am no denier!) seems to have rather simplified the story and pointed attention away from the underlying story of rural economic transformation that has and will continue to be a huge driver of human migration.
12
This just in: generally speaking, warmer temps tend to lower increase the spread of certain oests and diseases, and decrease resistance to disease and pests in plants. See also pine-bark beetles.
2
Easy winner of the most misleading headline of the month. Deep in the story we learn the data is uncertain to support the headline's unequivocal claim that climate change is causing the mass migration of Hondurans. Also, I don't think "I had a bad year agriculturally" is a valid asylum claim in the US.
22
@John J.
Actually the headline is correct in asserting that climate change is causing many Central American FARMERS to flee as their crops fail.
It's true. And there's nothing "unequivocal" about it.
12
@John J.
The "data is insufficient" only because no one has bothered to take the time to study the correlation.
I hope you don't like coffee, sonny.
2
1. What the article ACTUALLY did was start with the facts on the ground, and then explain said facts in terms of the scientific consensus, then mention the minority—the small minority—dissent. If they’d left that out, you’d have yelled that it was left out, most likely. But in any case, they did not remotely contradict their original premise.
2. This just in: under US laws at several treaties, refugees—including people who only CLAIM they’re refugees—have the right to ask for asylum, to have their cases heard, and to be treated decently whil they wait for a decision. You guys keep jumping right over all that, and swearing up and down that they just get let in and handed bennies.
It’s nonsense. Ugly nonsense, as it happens.
8
Thank you NYT for this article. Now I have a better understanding of the migration crisis. One problem creates others: Young men from farms thrown out of work join gangs or turn to drugs, for example. Growers see their crops failing and their children sick and hungry. And then they are told that to the north the streets are "paved with gold". How long would it take for you or I to pack up and go?
So, like the Middle East, much of the migration problem in Central America is being triggered by crop failures, most likely due to climate change, most likely due to burning fossil fuels. How long will it take for the obvious to become obvious? For that hoodlum we unfortunately must call POTUS, Mar de Lago's parking lots will have to have turned into docks.
Those fleeing the Central American crisis are bringing skills. Can't we exploit them here? Surely we have regions where they can resume their growing of coffee and their other crops. As we as a country grow older we need new labor. Let's make use of these fine people instead of treating them like dirt (I can think of a better target for such treatment. Hopefully he will be gone soon).
9
@Bob in NM...By all means, let's get busy exploiting the skills and [cheap] labor of the "fine people" from Central America. Since we don't grow coffee in the US, they could be put to work at Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts. Why, old people could even "adopt" a skilled worker to tend to the mundane affairs of old age. They could be offered the title of servant and be granted special housing in the old tool shed out back. The opportunities for exploitation are endless.
@Albert Edmud. Of coarse, left unsaid is who will pay for the education, health care and retirement of the exploited workers and their kids. Plus, I doubt they will voluntarily walk back to Honduras or turn into soylent green at retirement age. The other point the left conveniently leaves out of this discussion is the cumulative effect of taking low co2 emission immigrants and turning them (and their kid safety) into high emission (highest per capita on earth) Americans, resulting in...wait for it...accelerated climate change.
9
In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warned that by 2010, imminent sea-level rises would cause some 50 million “climate refugees” to be frantically fleeing from sea level regions all around the globe. So much for UN predictions. When they come true, it would be a kindness if someone would let all of us know. It would also be something of a miracle. The Times reports the predictions, but never the results of the predictions. The Times reports the "truth", selectively.
5
Despite my admiration for those who can chant what they got from denier sites such as Global Warming without the slightest let or hindrance, I am afraid i really will have to just go with the boring, namby-pamby analysis of realities.
You know, like the various CIA and DOD reports, or this guy:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Biermann/publication/289113183_Climate_Change_and_Human_Migration_Towards_a_Global_Governance_System_to_Protect_Climate_Refugees/links/57dfb16e08ae4e6f184cd801/Climate-Change-and-Human-Migration-Towards-a-Global-Governance-System-to-Protect-Climate-Refugees.pdf
5
Global warming (and drying) plays an increasingly large role in mass migrations around the world, though this isn't generally recognized yet. Political unrest in mid-eastern countries is aggravated by the movement of people from rural areas to already over-crowded cities as traditional agriculture fails due to prolonged drought. Access to shrinking water supplies from rivers that cross boundaries is a source of tension between neighboring countries, as those upstream build dams to sequester more, and those downstream threaten war when they get less. As southern regions become overcrowded and less habitable due to falling water and rising temperatures, people move North to regions that have been less severely impacted by climate change, and who can blame them? Any immigration policies that fail to take into account the impacts of climate change, and the urgency with which masses of people seek more habitable places to live, will fail.
7
@EB...Fortunately, millions of square miles in Canada and Siberia will become habitable as growing zones push northward in the Northern Hemisphere. Progressive immigration policies should institute programs to resettle climate change refugees in these developing areas immediately. Besides abundant land, Canada and Siberia have an abundance of water, also.
4
@Albert Edmud Yes, they are on a very short list of countries that will gain habitable territory with global warming. Will they open their borders to southern migrants, perhaps with a modern version of the Homestead Act? They could provide a path to citizenship and property ownership in return for a 10 year commitment to occupying and developing land in newly opened areas. Both countries currently have restrictive immigration policies.
4
Notice how the article doesn't mention what these former farmers are now doing in Texas? And obviously climate change isn't limited to central America. Those countries do need expert advise on coping with the changing weather, but so do growers in Florida, California, which sudden flooding, or the opposite, or unpredicted frost, can destroy mega millions of produce.
We should continue aid, with the goal of keeping people where they naturally belong. Our country isn't the answer for mega millions fleeing everything from crime, poverty, and now climate change. Yes, the climate is changing, but if we pretend to accommodate mega millions from the Americas, what about Africa? What do Bernie and AOS think they'll do for the billions in the world clamoring to get in? Medicare for the universe? Not on my taxes.
12
Oh brother. The narrative almost writes itself, doesn’t it?
9
@rjs7777
You imply the article is not factual. That would be wrong. It looks like you might not have read or understood the article? You're a denier, are you? As the article says, "climate change is rarely the sole factor." It also says that scientists cannot attribute these specific weather changes to climate change but are beginning to come to that conclusion. Make no mistake. Human-caused climate change is very real. An overwhelming consensus of science and scientists agree.
7
So here's a stupid question: Since climate change is a global phenomenon with impacts all over the world, why aren't U.S. farmers heading to Central America fleeing the effects of climate change in North America?
4
@Metaphor
If your question is "Why don't we yet appear to have problems here", the answer is, they're coming. Our bread-basket won't be that for much longer unless we fix this.
The second point is that our government subsidizes our farmers and provides mechanisms that support them from destitution during bad years.
The third is that the US is a much bigger country, so as climate change affects agriculture in one part of the country, another part may be less affected.
That's why no one is migrating from here (that and the violence in Central America, I should think....).
5
@Metaphor did you miss seeing the recent floods and devastation to US farms recently? Silos full of corn demolished, thousands of animals killed, farms decimated.
13
@Naomi And yet our farmers are producing food in ever increasing amounts. Nice try, but a swing and a miss. What is killing farmers in California is the deprivation of water by do-gooders who think saving a minnow - that is not being killed by man but by other predatory fish - is more important than preserving productive farm land. And NONE of it has to do with the changing weather which, let the record reflect has been changing since the dawn of creation.
2
According to our Stable Genius, climate change is fake news. If you hear it from Kellyanne it must be true.
10
t.rump is doing everything possible to make as big a problem of immigration as he can, so as to justify his idiotic cruelty. we need to encourage farmers to come to the US...as we are losing people who know how to farm...to the corporate behemoths who produce food that is killing us and the land.
11
@Alma Sophia
Same here. In Washington. We desperately need the farmers and the farm workers.
5
@Alma Sophia Of course, all farmers are alike. Language and technical skills cheerfully supplied by refugee groups.
1
@Alma Sophia...We can certainly use all of the slash-and-burn-coffee farmers we can entice to emigrate to the US. We would be a healthier lot, and so would the planet, if we returned to the forty-acres-and-a-mule halcyon days of the 19th century. But, why wait for emigrants to do our dirty work? Surely millions of American trapped in mindless urban nowhere lives would relish the opportunity to return to Mother Earth. The smell of plowed earth in the spring planting. The satisfaction of the fall harvest. Raising range chickens and husking golden corn. No wonder emigrants want to farm American soil.
1
Overpopulation equals excessive pollution equals climate change equals fleeing to greener pastures in countries with porous borders.. We are in the midst of taking on epic problems entering into the USA and most have no idea as to have catastrophic it is going to be for the US which already has its hands full with problems. We are country of immigrants but do we continue towards taking more and more or there comes a time when we say enough is enough.
Time out say for the next 7 years. Let us get our house in order. Let us eliminate the national debt of 22 trillion dollars. Let us take care of the failing health of every American who currently do not have affordable private health care. Let us bring a peaceful and proper end to all the Bush and Obama regime change wars. Let us not send a single US boot on the Venezuelan soil. Let us make sure there is no new terrorist organization being born in the cradle of civilization or elsewhere. Let us curtail drug abuse and suicides. Let us each do our part to reduce our carbon foot print and slow the pace of climate change. Let us do everything possible to stop the flow of farmers fleeing by helping them to stay where they are in their homelands.
18
Let us at least notice that republicans generally, and Das Trump particularly, have done everything they can to sabotage and defund Planned Parenthood, contraceptive coverage, sex education, and UNESCO and WHO efforts to promote family planning and education for girls around the world.
Let us notice who the problem is, in brief.
5
@Girish Kotwal
I agree. Totally.
But then the cruel monsters in our "government" couldn't get their jollies out of hurting everyone they can.
The way Trump is gaining control over every aspect of our system is too frightening for words.
I have a terrible feeling he and his groups of criminals will not relinquish power until they die.
And, even then, the harm to this once great nation will continues through the stacked judicial system.
I hope I'm wrong
And which countries are the sources of climate change?
3
@bob
Start with the countries that emit the highest levels of carbon dioxide due to the burning and consumption of fossil fuels -- i.e. China, the U.S., India and Russia to name those at the top of the list.
2
Global warming is a serious health threat to Central American farmers because fluid loss from perspiration forces their body to secrete excessive amounts of antidiuretic hormone to minimize urinary water loss. While this might get them through the day, over a long period of time it causes kidney failure leading to premature death unless they can get a kidney transplant or dialysis. So once again, we have migrants coming to the United States fleeing for their lives while President Nero fiddles out of tune with reality .
4
@Robert Speth and here I thought it was the telcom. industry raising up the EMF levels by promoting microwave ovens and iPhones in Central America....what will they do when they get here and are exposed to even greater levels of EMF radiation?
@Robert Speth Ohhh my God, yes, they're coming for our precious bodily fluids. It's a world-wide conspiracy. Next they'll be putting flouride in the water to control our thought processes. Heaven help us all.
1
@Robert Speth...It's unfortunate that Central America is a vast desert like the Sahara and the Gobi. If not for that, CA farmers could find adequate water to drink to replenish the fluids and hydrolytes that are excreted as they tended their fields that they hacked out of the Central American rain forests. Aw, yes, tuning reality.
Climate change. Ha. No. It’s our generous government benefits bringing them here. How will a single mother or even two parents who are uneducated, unskilled, non-English speaking people going to support their three, four, five, six or more kids in this country when the educated middle class struggles to support 2 or 3 kids. Government Benefits. That’s how.
16
If I were operating at this level of literacy and knowledge, I’d try to be quite a bit more careful about calling anybody else uneducated, unskilled, and badly-spoken.
1
"He headed north with his 14-year-old son last August, crossed the border illegally and settled in Texas. A brother and a sister, driven by similar circumstances, left Honduras soon afterward and also sneaked into the United States."
Does anybody even bother to try to enter the US legally anymore?
16
@Joshua Schwartz. No need. When there are political parties who's sole platform seems to be: stop deportations, give a pathway to citizenship to anyone can get here, demonized anyone who wants a say in who comes to this country as a "racist and xemophobe", weaken border security, call for ever higher immigration numbers, promote birthright citizenship (a huge enticement for illegals to come here) and on and on I'm surprised they are only catching a 100,000/month trying to get here. And oh yeah, they're all "environmentalists" who see no problem with adding millions to the country with the highest per capita co2 emissions.
3
oh come on, now asylum for climate change? I am a lifelong democrat and liberal but this insanity of everyone from central america, just walk in must stop. A marshall plan for central america, yes! Have their population simply migrate:No All civilized nation has immigration laws.
17
It will require an attitudinal sea change from climate scientists and the political mainstream to acknowledge that population growth is the main contributing factor for global warming.
It’s more people that create further environmental degradation via disappearing forests, wetlands, air and water pollution.
The planet’s rising Greenhouse gas levels are a direct consequence of more people competing for fewer resources via increased deforestation for farmlands which means further soil degradation via fertilization and fossil fuel requirements.
More people creates more poverty in third-world nations, hence more refugees fleeing to developed nations who, once here, create similar carbon footprints to those of the inhabitants in their host countries.
The present course that climate change is entirely the fault of the developed world is flawed and is driven by political correctness to avoid holding certain third-world countries accountable for their lamentable efforts to provide better family planning and population management.
9
I have read a lot of disheartening comments here. Lots of gibberish about building a wall. A wall along the 1,955 mile U.S. Mexico Border is unworkable. A wall is a money pit. As soon as it is built it will begin to crumble. And no wall can prevent the waves of climate refugees from entering and crossing our borders. These static solutions must be rejected in favor of dynamic solutions. Build in place of a wall a dynamic economic prosperity zone that can absorb climate refugees in the same way a wetland absorbs excess rains. A static concrete barrier will give way to the flood of immigrants but a dynamic economic prosperity zone built in line with ecological principles will absorb the talents of these people and help them assimilate to their new culture and economic opportunities. Yes they will become full citizens and their children will be an economic engine driving the 21 century economy. This will require Marshall Plan like investments. These investments are politically feasible because no republican has ever refused pork for his constituents. Republicans only resist pork for others. So it is crucial that the Marshall plan for the America's be centered in Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico. American doctors, teachers, construction and factory workers will be the primary beneficiaries of this investment as we transform the underdeveloped border into a zone of production. Unlike the static options this dynamic option will generate wealth for a 100 years.
4
@Perren Reilley
This government surely won't think like that or act thus. They see problems as nail and apply a hammer
1
@Perren Reilley...Pelosi's "immoral" border wall in California didn't start to crumble when it was started decades ago. In fact, if we can believe the pictures in this newspaper, it looks like it is pretty substantial. And, you know, it did bring that caravan in Tijuana to a halt when it tried to breach the wall last summer. BTW, New Mexico is a Blue State.
2
@Albert Edmud
Communists hide behind walls. And they soon find those walls reduced to rubble. I have stood on the detritus of such walls in Berlin. Freedom loving Americans build economic opportunity and we will take a coalition of red border states and blue border states and build an economy that will power this nation through the worst of climate change. We will adapt and thrive while communists and authoritarians seek stagnant solutions to dynamic problems. We will thrive and the communists and totalitarians who seek the sanctuary of walls will in the end be forced to accept the crumbs of our prosperity. Join your fellow travelers in Cuba if you like. You may be able to wall off that island but I doubt it. I think Communism, wall building, and incompetence are to be your lot.
It’s fascinating to read how so many commenters attribute climate change to every known ill afflicting mankind and that mankind alone is capable of mitigating its impacts. Never mind that climate change is as old as the earth itself, as are floods, drought and the extreme weather events. Never mind that long before the first homo sapiens roamed the earth its tectonic plates were diverging and converging, causing mountains to form and volcanic eruptions to spew forth the earths inner core, forming new land masses in some areas and covering others with deadly gases and ash. While no educated person will deny that the resulting climate change exists many less educated insist that we have the ability to affect it in a meaningful way. The sad irony is that many of the “solutions” they put forth, like the “Green New Deal” will have far more devastating effects on earths residents than any impact we have witnessed so far. The sad truth is that they do not realize that climate change is the embodiment of a living planet and that its absence requires a dead planet.
6
@tim k
Tim, you are right, an educated person knows the earth's climate system is very dynamic and always has been. But they also know the rate of change is particularly concerning and the correlation with human emissions is striking. So striking that many scientists have looked for causation that explains the correlation. Bingo! Humans are the cause. This has been confirmed by scientists worldwide, and for many years now. Educated people know this.
The Green New Deal could have an economic impact. Maybe it would be good, maybe it would be bad. Either way, it is probably trivial compared with a realignment of the food system. Global ag has the earth running on massive doses of "steroids" (pumping out the aquifers, using huge quantities of fertilizers and pesticides, changing our seeds). Have you enjoyed a good tomato lately? Tomatoes in the supermarket are worthless. We don't farm in huge regions, we "mine" the land meaning our farming is not sustainable. And in the Oceans the story is even worse.
The real sad truth lives in you. Unfortunately, people like you have too much influence and no progress can be made to problems we have created and problems we are likely smart enough to solve. Given that we will debate this issue rather than working to solve it, I expect Mother Nature with ultimately solve this for us, and I very much doubt we will like her solution.
5
@Jim....As an educated person, you can help me, I'm sure.
I was wondering what the temperature of the earth is, and how you educated scientists measured it?
Also, what is the targeted temperature of the earth that will stabilize the current climate, or maybe even reinstate the pre-Industrial Revolution climate?
Finally, what was the causation of the melting of the glaciers that covered Central Park just a few thousand years ago? I heard that overhunting of woolly mammoths was the culprit. Is that true?
Thanks for your help.
1
“The,” temperature of the earth?
This may not be the reason so many are trying to get out of those somewhat derelict communities today but global warming is happening and those closest to the equator will be the first to realize the greatest changes in their ecologies even though they will not be the ones experiencing the greatest increases in average temperatures. Hence, there will be far larger groups working their way away from this part of the world with some going south and more, due to the greater likelihood of jobs, north. We do have to begin to change the immigration laws in the US, Germany, Australia and many other nations in order to control the immigration problems this world is just starting to experience. A yearly limit needs to be set today. Once this limit is met those who do get into the nation illegally should be immediately returned to their nations and, sadly, this return must include children. Now, if Trump were well educated he would not take the little boy approach in dealing with this problem and would push for Congress to create a new law setting the numbers for immigrants and being more civil when returning the illegals to their home nations.
5
Every "climate denier" I've ever met lives in an air conditioned house, drives an air conditioned car, and works in an air conditioned office - if deniers are going to continue blocking solutions, then we should pass a law making artificial air conditioning illegal with very, very high penalties (including jail time for repeat offenders in non-air conditioned prisons). Let's level the playing field so that everyone has the opportunity to enjoy the climate we are creating. I think you'd be amazed at how quickly the deniers would demand we do something to fix the climate.
6
Running away from one's dysfunctional gov't system in hopes of gaining from another in an industry affected the world over only puts a band-aid on each individual without tackling the issue itself.
The U.S. cutting off aid to these countries is not the answer so long as those monies are used as intended. If, however, the hundreds of millions of dollars in aid only lines the pockets on the politicians then, either cutting off the aide is warranted or an Independent Arbiter (the U.N.) to distribute the funds is warranted.
10
@Coffee Bean
"... If, however, the hundreds of millions of dollars in aid only lines the pockets of the politicians then, either cutting off the aide is warranted or ..."
For this very same reason, many of us would like to cut off the aid we are remitting to the members of the present Trump Republican administration.
Which is telling us that all brown people are corrupt, lazy, dishonest, and inept, including the immigrants from Central America and their governments.
Corrupt, lazy, inept, and dishonest: Sound like anybody else we know?
Frankly, your "running away from one's dysfunctional gov't system" sounds too much like more of the same Trump lies and demonization.
1
@Robert
You ever so conveniently left out a potential remedy: "either cutting off the aide is warranted OR... an Independent Arbiter (the U.N.) to distribute the funds is warranted."
I'm not picking sides. Rather, putting forth a potential remedy by installing an Independent Arbiter because of a gov't roiled in chaos and graft.
This would benefit the population of the country, help the country's GDP and potentially be a step in the appropriate direction to remove sanctions levied.
Yet not one democrat running for president has mentioned that mass immigration into the United States, legal or not poses a problem. Add to that fact very little assimilation among these groups you have a scenario in which America becomes more divided not necessarily more diverse. It’s like human nature. Say you can’t have something and suddenly, you create the aura of desire and attraction. The desire to get in before the gate swings shut permanently. Why not do a comparison between Canada and the United States in terms of immigration. Or any other country around the world. The democrats may be on board for health care but will miss the boat on this issue.
14
@CritizenQ
Point taken. But we're also still early enough in the campaign season for immigration to be rightfully addressed as more than a knee-jerk response to the monotonal "NO!" that's part and parcel of the current administration -- besides, there are so many other pressing issues that have to be addressed in this country.
2
Peasant farmers in rural Central America are susceptible to all types of problems, not the least of which is climate change and drought. People migrate north as we might expect to seek work in the US.
That said, those who migrated from Honduras’ hinterlands also send money home. When those funds arrive, they provide even less incentive for the landless rural laborers to pick coffee for $8-10 a day. Remittances provide a buffer and make it easier not to work for a low wage.
So goes the cycle of poverty to our south. Yet, our political leaders (calling Stephen Miller a leader pains me but he has Trump’s ear for now) want to cut all aid to help those struggling nations.....yes, there is corruption but there are also thousands of impoverished families who simply want to work, feed their families, and send their kids to a decent school.
5
Not a single comment has mentioned the obvious logical flaw in this story. If these farmers are really "fleeing climate change" for the USA, then obviously they believe that the USA has a perfectly fine and unchanging climate, which does not jive at all with the claims of USA climate catastrophe that the alarmists are pushing.
9
@Wally, climate change adds one more element to their desperation. In seeking a better life in the US they are fleeing a bad situation for the possibility--not the certainty--of a better life, perhaps in a field less dependent on weather than farming.
3
@Larry Shambling
Larry, that's my point -- they are not feeling climate change, but rather seeking a better life economically.
5
Why pretend we can keep the border open and everyone is welcome when it is inevitable we will have to close it in the future? Africa and the subcontinent will continue to give birth with no regard to over population in their area. US and EU cannot possible take in the 4 billion people that’s going to be born from those area so why even pretend as will?
15
@AmateurHistorian
I propose we eliminate our government and construct one based on Artificial Intelligence. Logic and reason pay no part in our country's decisions. AI would show us the way to survive, and would tell us whether strict immigration controls are a good idea. It would also tell us how many people our country's resources can support. And perhaps it would show us the consequences of fiddling while Rome burns.
3
@Daphne
AI and democracy, civil right and equality don’t match. You cannot have pure logic and pretend all human are equal.
This is just the merest whiff, not even a small taste of the displacement that will happen due to climate change. It will happen Within the US as well as outside it. Currently arable land will not be. Other land may or may not become arable. Water will be, at best, different and more likely radically variable and unpredictable. Way too much and way too little.
There will be massive displacement within the US. We aren't prepared for it financially or culturally or technically. There will be mass migration from middle latitudes to higher ones in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia. And there will be war because of it as conditions grow more untenable and people more desperate.
Don't wonder about immigration. People want to survive. You would too. Screaming build the wall is like spitting on a forest fire to put it out. If you are concerned about immigration you should be a radical environmentalist working to mitigate climate change. The change has already started. Alternatively, you should be OK with murdering innocents at our borders...a not implausible scenario.
That is a possible nightmare America given our apparent corruption driven national stupidity. We can avoid it. But we have to face it like serious, honorable women and men through serious and honorable elected officials who represent voters and not corporations. We are sooo, sooo far away from that right now.
There are good choices ahead. The most important is restoring actual democracy. End Big Money.
15
When these countries have issues whether it be weather of other economic, governmental etc matters, they are supposed to stay in their country and address it.
"Fleeing" to America is not their right nor or obligation to accept. In fact, our obligation is to our country to keep our borders secure and illegal aliens out.
10
@Juergen Granatowski
Please, if the current administration blithely continues to refuse to attempt to redress this nation’s major contribution to climate change, what right do we have to insist that others remain in their countries and just resign themselves to suffering the devastating consequences of our inaction. That is tantamount to declaring that I have a right to place rattlesnakes in my neighbor’s house and also the right to prevent him from escaping.
1
From Canada, with so many dire issues on the table now, I feel a growing frustration listening to the vitriol and battling between Rep and Dem advocates in the Times forums. You sound hateful and contemptuous of each other. I feel compelled to warn you that while you are spending your time duelling you are losing everything; your place in the world, your democracy, your unity, your generosity. This is a time for bridge-building. The only belief system that will make any sense going into the times that are being forecast for us (by so many scientists that by now it should be irrefutable) is an acceptance of the interconnectedness of all life. We are all in this together, people. Let’s talk about how we can see ourselves in a global context. That includes caring about the fate of Central Americans , having the foresight to mobilize for a visionary response to a surge of climate migrants, and addressing each other with respect and tolerance. Please, let’s extend ourselves to try to understand the system of values that our political opponent holds. When things go down, the only thing that will matter will be our shared humanity.
6
@AJG
In other words, there are very fine people on both sides? Can you truly not see that the Trumpy posts here vis-à-vis immigration are top-to-bottom lies, demonization and fear mongering? Many of us here are fighting for the very things that you are advocating for. Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke out in opposition to a similar white nationalist personality cult in 1933. Where you have been the past several years? Maybe you did not hear the recent speech by a white member of your own parliament last week, who said--an outright lie--that white supremacism was not a significant threat? Maybe you failed to notice your own recent federal budget which included new, inhumane immigration rules? Pay attention. The last thing any of us need is more "there are very fine people on both sides."
3
I think you may have proven my point here. However, it’s very difficult to emerge from a locked-in ideology to embrace a wider vision when you feel under threat. The language I hear in the US tells me you are at war. I don’t hold Canada as an alternate, utopian system. All systems have been corrupted by drives to place individual and corporate needs above the whole. I’m saying, let’s look from a higher place, higher even than the highest parts of our ideologies. Globalization has given us the certain awareness of our interconnectedness politically and economically. Climate studies have confirmed this environmentally. We are interdependent. How did your nemesis arrive at his point of view? What happened on the microcosmic level of home and community to evolve white nationalism? What is it’s goal? What is the inherent fear a white nationalist has? Loss of identity? Economy? Agency? Community? Try to understand the fears and losses of your opponent. Recognize that most of us are doing our best. Yes, there are those who foment contention from the depths of a dark heart, and those individuals need to be recognized, but attacking an entire political party will only drive it to close ranks around such individuals. When organisms are attacked, they fight. Stop attacking, start reconciling. That’s my point.
@AJG
Thank you for your reply. You make many good points. My take on this is that there are a number of good people in the Trump camp who have made a terrible mistake. All of us make mistakes. Sometimes the best of us make terrible mistakes. The nature of my own participation here is motivated by several things. One of these is normalization. Based on our own recent experience here, if we were to do as you suggest and refrain from describing what is happening (attacking, as you put it), then it would almost certainly become normalized. It is indisputable that the abandonment by our Republicans in Congress of their Constitutional oversight duties has convinced their constituents that everything is just dandy.
2
Climate change is real and no one is talking about one of the ways to solve it, except Real Time with Bill Maher this past Friday if you happened to watch. Yes, we humans are causing this catastrophe and one way to stop it would be less humans. We no longer need large families to tend to labor intensive farms. Dying religions like Catholicism would make you think otherwise but we don’t need any more people.
7
Think about this the next time you complain that a cup of coffee is “too expensive”.
2
Of all the variables that the New York Times could blame for the migration of impoverished Central Americans, they blame climate change. I am reminded of the Catholic church in the 16th century that blamed crop failures and famine on the suffering peasants who had failed to tithe enough to the church. If we build more churches, support more priests and bishops, then God will smile upon us and end our suffering. And like today, apocalyptic religious fundamentalism worked.
Antarctic and Siberian ice core samples show that climate has always been warming or cooling, much more than today, and it has never been stable. More significantly, every warming period started when carbon dioxide (CO2) was at an historic low, and every cooling period started when CO2 was at an historic high. Every time! That is not the behavior of a greenhouse gas on planet Earth.
A fraction of a second ago in geologic time (about 12,000 years), miles-deep ice covered much of North America and Europe. In a geologic instant all that ice disappeared and melted back to the tiny dot that is today's North Pole. No SUVs or CO2 to blame for that.
And today, the high priests want your money and your freedom to appease the Vengeful God of Climate Change. Different scripture, same scam.
8
@Alastair Gordon
I beg to differ. FIRST. Climate change is not a "scam".
Not only is it real, but it is happening now -- and not only as part of a cycle of geological events that has happened throughout the ages -- but also as the result of a growing world population, and the abundant dependence on burning fossil fuels that ultimately effect our atmosphere.
It's all part of the equation.
5
@Alastair Gordon I would love to be around to hear your complaints when coffee is 30$ per half pound and the bread shelf at your grocery store is empty.
1
@N. Smith - Those are powerful declarations of your faith in the gospel of man-made climate change, and I will never argue religion with anyone. But if you are asserting a scientific reality, could I ask for the evidence and reasoning to back it up? Then we'll have something to discuss.
Poorly-researched story, though kudos on a chic political headline.
The WSJ months ago beat the NYT to the punch on the true cause of Honduran coffee-grower migration: Brazil!
Yes, Brazil. Their huge investment in coffee expansion a few years ago is coming to fruition, with booming yields, causing international prices ("NY C-price") to tank below $1 for first time in 13 years, which is below the cost of production in Central America (but not in Brazil). Add to this an expansion in Vietnam and Columbia, and world output has expanded 15% in three years, while consumption has been flat. Thus over-production: capitalism's boom and bust cycle rears it's ugly head once again.
But apparently blaming climate change for this emigration (note the paucity of scientific evidence on this explanation) fits better with the editorialized "news" in these pages. Climate change is real, but doesn't explain every event in the world. Sometimes Karl Marx's observation of capitalist production "constant revolutionizing of production and uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions" is the obvious, if less chic, answer.
11
We buy coffee for our family business coffee brand from family farm co-ops in Central America and Peru. All our coffee is 100% certified Smithsonian shade grown Bird Friendly®, USDA Organic and Fair Trade. Every bean in every bag to help save birds, tropical forests, family farmers and their workers, local rural economies and the Earth we all share.
We support farm families in Central America by paying prices well above what the big brands pay. This means coffee farm children can eat well, go to school and get preventative medical care. It means farmers and their workers have more resources to fight coffee rust and make it through a poor harvest.
At the beginning of the 20th Century volunteers started food programs in schools in NYC for immigrant children:
The cafeteria program started in immigrant communities.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/first-school-lunch?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_campaign=Newsflash_2019-04-13_17%3a40%3a00&utm_content=446677
If food companies acted responsibly, if volunteers came forward and if consumers voted with their pocket books a great deal of good could be done without any government involvement.
We do not need to ring hands and rail against POTUS, I urge applying that energy to focused action on the ground for the people.
Oh yeah, I don't make as much money as Howard Shultz but our coffee tastes better and we are doing something worthwhile.
2
Of all the variables that the New York Times could blame for the migration of impoverished Central Americans, they blame climate change. I am reminded of the Catholic church in the 16th century that blamed crop failures and famine on the suffering peasants who had failed to tithe enough to the church. If we build more churches, support more priests and bishops, then God will smile upon us and end our suffering. And like today, apocalyptic religious fundamentalism worked.
Antarctic and Siberian ice core samples show that climate has always been warming or cooling, much more than today, and it has never been stable. More significantly, every warming period started when carbon dioxide (CO2) was at an historic low, and every cooling period started when CO2 was at an historic high. Every time! That is not the behavior of a greenhouse gas on planet Earth.
A fraction of a second ago in geologic time, about 12,000 years, miles-deep ice covered much of North America and Europe. In a geologic instant all that ice disappeared and melted back to the tiny dot that is today's North Pole. No SUVs to blame for that.
And today, the high priests want your money and your freedom to appease the Vengeful God of Climate Change. Different scripture, same scam.
The writing is on the wall with climate change—
And alas, we're even going backwards with Trump.
5
So climate change deniers and other right wingers thought the crisis at the southern borders of North America and Europe was bad? Just wait a couple decades until climate refugees start fleeing in earnest from Africa, Asia and Latin America. By then it will be too late, their situation too desperate and no walls or lack of rescue at sea will stem the flow.
3
Every climate change story like this one should be the lead headline. There is no more important news than the ongoing destruction of the planet.
5
The CIA had a report on how climate change is a national security matter. Refugees from murder are on the doorstep; refugees from desertification is coming. I doubt that American farmers going under with flood issues wall cross paths with Central American farmers seeking water.
A clueless White House with a dustbowl for brains is no help.
1
My family came here because they thought that it would be better here than there as will these people. Global warming will create a human wave of immigration the likes of which have never been seen before.
5
The complexity of the argument is always increasing. A few years ago, the discussion was whether manmade climate change was real- now it's a discussion of whether there is climate change at all. So many commenters go back to positions we had before we read the article. Why is that? Reportage is certainly not cut-and-dried, and a reporter, no matter what organization they work for, sees things through their own lens. But this reporter found that climate trends were making certain crops untenable in Honduras, and people have had to give up and migrate elsewhere in order to survive. The reporter always brings a little of his or her bias into the mix. This would be true even if his or her viewpoint on climate change were not in alignment with what he or she were seeing.
We expect this of reporters; reporters are not politicians.
Sometimes the situation speaks for itself.
I'm asking myself to read carefully and not let my own biases make it hard to understand what I am reading. The news requires unraveling from our own tangled reading of it.
@Geranima Seriously? "...whether there is climate change at all?" Everyone from leading oil company executives at companies like SHELL to actual climatologists not only believes it is happening; they have documented it, scrupulously. The only people who have a contrarian perspective on this are the equivalent of flat earthers. Yes, they are out there, and the American president is one of them. That should be a major clue that its an entirely bogus notion.
2
To a hammer everything is a nail. To a climate change activist, every human migration and ecological trauma can be traced to climate change. Man’s selfish exploitation of fossil fuels is responsible for South African power generation shortfalls, Bangladeshi blight, Venetian flooding, California mudslides and wildfires, ad infinitum. Why does man always put himself in the center of his own drama, and not accept that natural forces largely out of our control have and will have unpredictable environmental effects?
4
@Chester
Agree about the hammer and the nail. Another equally truthful homily; sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.
1
What irony. Coffee is not native to this area. Its introduction fostered the explosion in the use of slaves in the region and the massive destruction of native forests to create coffee plantations. We are supposed now to lament the passing of an industry rooted in slavery and destruction of the local ecology. What irony indeed.
3
Try planting the robusta coffee tree. (I think I read about it in the NYTimes Science section about twenty years ago).
@NorthernVirginia
A recent PBS report noted that several coffee farmers in Honduras planted this varietal a few years ago, but they also succumbed to weather conditions.
3
Good luck to those Central American farmers fleeing to the U.S. -- especially since this president puts no credence in science, let alone the effects of climate change.
4
We need to aid countries to plant trees. A crops, for building, for other biomass types of usage.
The only solution to climate change in the next 10 years is to plant 2.4Trillion trees world wide. This will absorb all carbon emissions as the world de-carbonizes. No other solution exists.
No more corn for cattle. Plant trees for People.
8
If production is poor, why have prices not risen?
2
Climate change complicates mass migration now, even where it is not the primary cause. Looking ahead, it will be the primary cause for many millions worldwide. Unless and until we pull the countries of the world together to determine the best ways to deal with the coming tsunami wave of climate immigrants, we will live with unnecessary consequences that reveal the ugly side of human potentials. So far, we are not doing well! Syria? Ethiopia? Honduras et al?
Even if we mount the necessary worldwide mobilization to stop greenhouse gas emissions, the lagging effects of residual CO2 already present will guarantee huge mass climate migrations within the next two decades. Time is short. Civilization is at stake.
7
It is maddening that with the mounting evidence that indicates climate change is real (contrary to what the dotard in the White House proclaims) we still choose to ignore those facts by choosing those who continue to deny climate change.
Yes, we have the climate change deniers just as we have the birthers, the trumpers and the rest of the tin foil hat crowd that believes that scientists are just out of touch with reality.
We still have a "president" who pushes "clean" coal as means to salvation when the evidence is clear that coal, no matter the proclamations from Trump, is far from clean (no matter how much it is washed-Trump's statement, not mine).
As we watch the new refugees, those affected by climate change, seek a better life, how will we treat those who are the canaries in the coal mine, so to speak, the first affected?
We, the population as a whole, are responsible to them for our actions in our failure to act and hold our policy makers responsible.
But, when one receives his intelligence briefings from a morning comedy show and his intelligence briefer is another con artist on the same network at night, we cannot expect any type of meaningful action anytime soon.
1
@Dan Yes, we’ve heard this all before, especially here in the NYT comments section. Any suggestions? Who should we vote for next? Which of 19 Democratic candidates (and maybe Too Old Joe) has a magic wand? Or do you have the solution (and not just the complaints).
1
@DB
Part of the solution would be to vote for the candidate who has the desire and best ideas on how to begin the daunting task of "cleaning up" our dirty world.Re-electing Trump, who has shown us that he is only interested in maintaining the status quo, would be a non-starter.
Several readers have cited population control as a way to reduce global warming. Humankind is overwhelming our planet. Reliable birth control has been available for some time, and yet populations are exploding. Why? Because women around the world still struggle to control the outcomes of their own lives. There are very few women who would elect to have lots of random pregnancies; especially when they cannot feed the resulting children. And yet, to the male half of humanity, this serious problem barely registers.
The problem of overpopulation will only get worse as long as womens' lives continue to be dominated by men.
9
@Susan Population growth in developed nations is falling.
@DB
Not dramatically or sufficiently enough in the African continent.
From Wikipedia:
Estimates published in the 2000s tended to predict that the population of Earth will stop increasing around 2070; In a 2004 long-term prospective report, the United Nations Population Division projected the world population to peak at 9.22 billion in 2075.
After reaching this maximum, it would decline slightly and then resume a slow increase, reaching a level of 8.97 billion by 2300.
This prediction was revised in the 2010s, to the effect that no maximum will likely be reached in the 21st century. The main reason for the revision was that the ongoing rapid population growth in Africa had been underestimated. A 2014 paper by demographers from several universities and the United Nations Population Division forecast that the world's population will reach about 10.9 billion in 2100 and continue growing thereafter..."
2
@Susan
Ignorance, lack of education, religious beliefs, male dominant societies, unavailability of birth control, and several other factors caused overpopulation. Starvation seems inevitable. The answer is not to grow more crops to feed more people. Let's not assume the population growth is inevitable. We can combat procreation despite the above mentioned obstacles. We should be searching for ways to decrease pregnancies, and not assume it's a man's God given right to father as many babies as he wants. We can't save the world if people bring about their own demise, and it's hubris to think we can. We can, however, tie our foreign aid to programs that stop the annual pregnancy in many countries. It's the only thing that can save them.
2
I predict that as climate change continues and the pressure increases from the displaced to the south of the US, Canada will be invaded for its valuable arable land further north.
This will be especially true if the disastrous leadership trend in the US continues.
2
If thirty years from now the Midwest farmers are suffering from scorching droughts and dry aquifers, Canada will need to build a wall.
4
The article’s by-line claims Central American farmers are fleeing to the US to avoid the “more extreme weather events” brought on by climate change. Interestingly, photographs included in the article show an an abundance of beans and notes there is a shortage of workers necessary to harvest them. Hmmm, there’s plenty of beans to be picked but farmers are fleeing the fields none the less. Could it be that the 28% of Guatemalans engaged in agriculture have decided that picking beans is for the birds and that claiming “asylum” in the US is a much less tedious and far more lucrative endeavor?
5
Comparisons with collapses of Mayan civilization need to be considered. How much of their plight is related to over population and deleterious land use? Poor people make poor land and poor land makes poor people. And we need to examine how poor land use contributes to climate change (as well as how climate change contributes to people making the land poorer).
How we can help these people to ecologically restore the land and native plant communities to provide income and climate resiliency?
How can be act ecologically, now, to prevent the climate refugees from soon numbering in the millions?
2
One wonders how bad does it have to get for the deniers to acknowledge the reality of climate change: we are the source and the salvation.
I fear it will need to get a good deal worse.
3
Recognition of the causes impelling the migration of Hondurans towards the US is a first step in figuring out how best to help them. We are being tested as a civil society by our treatment of the Honduran migrants. We need to act humanely rather than barbarously because our turn to suffer the impact of climate change is not too far away and we too will be in need of help. The way of Trump is uncivilized and unworthy of the values we espouse. Climate scientists have noted that rising water levels are going to render our coastal hinterlands uninhabitable possibly even forcing their residents to migrate inwards. Will we react to our citizen migrants as some would have us treat the migrants on our borders? I hope not.
2
Why don't they try growing crops besides coffee? Doing the same unworkable thing over and over is insane.
2
@Liz
Any way you look at it, you still need water for any kind of crop -- and THAT is the problem.
2
The empty moralizing, here, is astounding.
Each one of us is responsible for climate change. Every American. Every Honduran. Every whatever. For generations.
No country bears a greater responsibility than any other. No individual bears more responsibility than another. Each of us has the ability and responsibility to act.
And the best thing we could do is to voluntarily have smaller families. We need less people. The planet cannot sustain our numbers at the kind of consumption ALL PEOPLE would, and are trying, like to have.
And we will also have to stop immigration. Our nation, and planet, cannot afford to take the excess populations of dozens of countries. For every Honduran we take today there will be two more tomorrow.
The US, and Western Europe, were projected to have very low population growth, and in some cases negative change, which would have helped mitigate the effects of climate change. Now we are importing population to continue 'growing.' Bringing people from low emission economies to high emission economies. And the numbers never decrease- the sending country continues to be over-populated.
3
What would all the fleeing people do if there wasn't a United States to flee to? Turn and fight the thing(s) they are fleeing from? Its called the Fight OR Flight reflex for a reason. If the answer was always to run away it would have evolved to be the Flight Reflex. Imagine the world today if the Founders just got on a boat and went to France when it became a slog here during the Revolution. Doesn't matter what they are 'fleeing' from: gangs, domestic violence, climate change. They need to fight the battles on their own turf and not just head to the United States. We cannot lift the world out of the misery it has created for itself.
2
In July, 2017, the Trump Administration ended funding for a Central American project that taught farmers a variety of techniques for growing to counter the new climate variations. The US's "Climate Nature and Communities" program, started in the Obama years, funded NGO's like Asociación de Cooperación para el Desarrollo Rural de Occidente (C.D.R.O.) which had achieved some success in small projects. (See New Yorker article, April 3, 2019) Instead of cancelling such projects, the logical response should be to expand them. But it's hard with a climate-denier in the White House who also cares nothing for the well-being of our neighbors.
5
..they need to get in line with everyone else who wants to come here - immigration needs to be regulated. Our Country has always been a haven for migrants and will continue to be. It just needs to be controlled.
...and our inept Congress needs to pass legislation to naturalize the million of immigrants living here now.
Everyone’s focusing on Trump’s antics - it’s Congress that must take action....forget about it.
Humans need clean water and reliable food sources to survive. The worst is yet to come.
2
Some responses to the comments:
1. Wishing upon a global pandemic to solve problems of overpopulation: a) you seem to wish incredible suffering to people that do not have access to medication (i.e. the poor). Really? b) one-child policy & high penalties - who will that hit? People that don't have access to health care, abortion facilities, and money.
2. The US shouldn't allow immigration and deal with the chaos they created. It's the 'western' world's actions over the last century that has lead to these changes, it's not the way of living of a small scale farmer in Nicaragua that caused climate breakdown. It's industries and our way of living. We are responsible. With our consumerism, our ignorance, and our greed for more. When will we stop thinking "us" and "them"? Demand action from your government for carbon taxes or pollution limits, force the companies to do better. Pay that little bit more for quality over quantity and make it last! You have a vote and you have a voice. Using it wisely can be a great first step!
3. Thinking about our own everyday life and lifestyle we can make changes today. We can drive smaller or even no cars. We can demand from our cities to provide the public infrastructure to favour trains, buses and cycling if that's not an option right now. We can choose to have less children if we have good sex education programmes and health facilities.
Imagine a world in which we reached out to one another with help, understanding, and compassion!
1
We still have far too many people in the USA and other countries primarily responsible for the industrial pollution that has contributed to climate change who deny responsibility for their actions. The massive migrations into Western Europe and those happening along our southern border are harbingers of events to come. Most of these people live on the edge and climate change is pushing things over the edge. The consequences cannot be ignored nor can they be walled off. We have been warned for several decades that climate change was happening but in some quarters still ignore the warnings. The longer we procrastinate the more severe the consequences will keep getting. The "'ching ching" of the cash register will not drown out the sound of waves lapping at the door.
11
We all must acknowledge that the problem of climate change starts with the the person in the mirror. Only then can we make real progress in addressing how to solve the problem. The list of seemingly insignificant things we all do add up to a substantial part of the problem. Idling SUVs at the bus stop, plastic bags and cardboard boxes for everything, thermostats set too high or too low - and the list is endless. The devil is in the details and politicians are unlikely to take meaningful action until it is too late but that is another scree requiring much more ink. We each must start facing down our own consumption monsters. A little birth control wouldn't hurt either.
6
Fungal blights are raising havoc in many of the areas where coffee, cacao, and banana grow. These crops when stressed by droughts, heat, floods make them more sensitive to fungal pathogens. Plants like us get infections and like us need antibiotics to recover but like us over use leads to fungal resistance. As the article suggests higher elevations could keep plants less stressed and thus less subject to fungal blights that thrive the more humid and warmer lower elevations. We are motile so we can move to more favorable conditions not so much for plants where adapt of die is the Darwinian rule.
2
American farmers : average 65, struggle to find labor, a next generation willing to farm.
Wouldn’t you think these resilient, experienced farmers, accustomed to hard work and change, would be welcomed enthusiastically?
27
@organic farmer - I think they are welcomed (in a variety of jobs), just as long as it is under the radar. That might be part of the reason our Grifter-in-Chief quietly sends away the help at Trump golf clubs when too many questions are asked about their immigration status.
I agree with your points.
We have a lot of hardworking Spanish speaking immigrants here in the Midwest.
The issues in this article - climate change influencing agriculture and in turn spurring migration pressure - is not a new concept. We could see it coming. It will get worse over time.
We should anticipate the changes that will be necessary, but as usual not until it is a crisis.
"Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities." Attributed to Winston Churchill
9
@organic farmer
If they were sugar beet farmers from Sweden, we'd send the Welcome Wagon to greet 'em.
1
Climate change is a reality.
The pollution of our air and water is a reality.
Population explosion is also a reality which multiplies the effects of climate change and pollution.
Regardless of one's position on the migrant crisis, look at the pictures, read the stories. A 20 year old woman with 3 children. Similar to the pictures of people fleeing Syria for Europe; parents in their 20's or 30's with 4 or 5 children.
The governments of these countries are irresponsible. But they are not solely at fault. The U.S. does little to encourage birth control in the countries where we provide aid and/or educational assistance. In some cases agencies have been forbidden to discuss birth control by American religious groups. This has also happened within our country.
Somehow, abortion and birth control have become confused or interchangeable. Planned parenthood estimates less than 10% of it's budget is for abortion, but the zealots respond that 'they use the same doorway'. Planned parenthood provides pre natal care to women who would be unable to afford it and counseling to assist women to avoid becoming pregnant.
Unfortunately, because many anti abortion groups lump these services together, many low income mothers are denied help.
The result; too many unplanned pregnancies, too many struggling single moms.
The connection of overpopulation to the problems of climate change? Perhaps not obvious, but real.
69
@CD Totally agree with you. You mention mothers with children but not the men/fathers who help produce these children. Birth control has to go both ways. In some (often Catholic) countries, men see children as a sign of their virility.
Not only is it the government that needs to lead but also the cultural and religious leadership. Catholic leaders - all male - continue to call birth control a sin.
19
@CD On this Palm Sunday, let me be clear: The vast majority of us Christians oppose abortion, not birth control.
2
@CD,
Interesting take- that American citizens should be providing abortions for poor Honduran and Syrian women. Muslims in Pakistan won't even take immunizations if they they think the US is involved. I am sure those policies would go over very well.
Over-population is cause by individuals. Individuals have babies. Not the US government.
We have no obligation to make life better for irresponsible people. The West is being colonized by a new kind of imperialism- cultural and numeric.
Climate change is also affecting Australia but not everyone is moving somewhere else. Poor farmers are moving from Central America because they believe they'll find a better life in the US. Keep letting them in and they will keep coming. By all means the US should help its neighbors but allowing them to all move in is ultimately counter-productive.
37
@Mark - are you referring to movement of Australian farmers (likely educated, "wealthy" in a relative sense compared to the Central American farmers)?
I have never been to Australia and I may be wrong (please correct me if so) but looking at the map it would be kinda tough to swim the distance that would be required of poor farmers, and their children, to get from OTHER countries to Australia. Airplanes and boats are expensive means of migration.
As evidenced from the news pictures, poor people ARE walking from Central America to North America is feasible. Big difference.
4
Agreed. As long as we have dangerous provocateurs like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh polluting our national discussion about immigration reform with misinformation and fear we’ll never be able to come together to pass laws that fix our inability to quickly process immigrants making baseless asylum claims.
1
More than 6,000 smallholder farmers in Nicaragua are now protected against both excessive precipitation and drought with a parametric insurance program. The costs are covered by some social impact investors and NGOs.
As this article notes, the challenges these small farmers have always faced are amplified by climate change. That's why programs like the one in Nicaragua are so critical; this approach also is being replicated in other countries.
The upshot is that when a crop fails, the farmers have the financial resources to plant a new crop; they don't have to sell capital assets or, as a last resort, give up farming and move to the city or migrate to another land.
29
There are several cycles in the climate at different time scales that have nothing to do with human induced climate change. If things were better 10 years ago, then this is likely not human-induced climate change, which has been developing gradually for 100 years. There are 10 and 20-year cycles ("decadal oscillations") that are natural and part of our climate. Yes, this is climate change, but relating it to over population or greenhouse gases could be a mistake. I am not saying human induced climate change is not a factor, but it's a small factor over time scales of 10 years or so. Climate scientists are not able to detect the anthropogenic climate signal over periods as short as 1-2 decades. They prefer to analyze 50-100 year periods to average out "natural variability".
16
@Tony You need to find answers for why farmers in Central America weren't driven from their land by changes in temperature, rainfall, and weather predictability in previous periods, and why they are being affected so much today. I have experienced several 100 year floods and storms that I know of in the past two decades in several US locations. Weather patterns have been disrupted beyond natural variability. Human impact on climate has taken place mostly over the past two centuries of industrialization, but so severe in the past 50 years that now we now are seeing a delayed acceleration of its effects. Sure, there could be factors other than population or greenhouse gases, but it sounds as if you are trying to justify and rationalize our irresponsibilities and to question any study or proposal to reverse the course of human impact on the environment.
8
@Tony The time is long past to stop denying the crucial part human activity is playing in climate change. There are too many of us doing too many things that are not sustainable.
3
only two things to say here: we were warned that climate change would go this far, and have this effect.
now, we're warned that climate change will go much, much farther, if we do nothing about it ... and even if we do a lot about it, fast.
the US military, all branches, affirms the reality of climate change, the serious security and defense issues posed by climate change; they are already proactive about it.
the rest of us? it's still mostly about burgers, barbecues, and cars big enough to hold all the kids.
47
@drollere
Yep, and don't forget the insanely cheap airline rates...
3
I have been a serious gardener for decades and t is getting harder and harder to grow vegetables because of unpredictable weather. In the past couple of years practically every gardener I have spoken to has had their garlic crop affected, for the first time ever, by rust.
25
@Robin
On the other hand, our growing conditions are getting much better, with longer seasons and milder winters.
In 1972, the book, Limits to Growth, by Meadows et al. appeared.
it argued that population growth was unsustainable in the long run. If we did not control population growth through family planning, at some points death rates would have to rise to bring births and deaths into balance. Indeed, because people make decisions on having families now, but their children start using resources at a maximal rate two decades in the future, mathematical models suggested "overshoot and collapse" as a likely scenario.
Global warming provides a mechanism whereby death rates will likely rise in the future.
And global warming is itself caused by overpopulation.
It is hopeless to fight global warming without also cutting down birth rates through contraception. We have lost 47 years doing essentially nothing about population growth.
In 1960 the population of Guatemala was 4 million. Now it has more than quadrupled to 17 million.
To have any chance of fighting global warming we probably need something like China's one-child program for the third world. Politically, we probably need something like a one-child or two-child policy for the entire planet.
We have squandered too much time. It is likely that coercive methods will be needed to curb overpopulation. But that is better than a series of resource wars and a stream of hundreds of millions of migrants try to immigrate to the US and Europe.
We need to stop the posturing and recognize the depth of the problem.
56
@Jake Wagner A good pandemic would solve so many problems. Imagine if half the people over 65 were wiped out. Social security would instantly be solvent. The wealth passing to younger people could assure their retirement and payoff student loans. Property prices would become affordable if the market was flooded with many uninhabited properties for sale. Maybe climate change is the earth coughing up a hairball. Self correcting reaction.
10
@Jake Wagner
Jared Diamond has argued that agriculture was the dumbest mistake of the human species because it has allowed humans to support a population that is really too great for the ultimate carrying capacity of the planet.
The adoption of agriculture has also changed the whole of the earth's environment, beginning with the felling of forests to open large tracts of land to grow a limited number of animals and crops, thereby beginning the destruction of the earth's biodiversity and altering human relationships as societies fragmented according to their 'work'.
Well, it looks as if anthropogenic climate change is going to pretty much stop agriculture as we know it in its tracks since climatic weather conditions are becoming too erratic for standard agriculture. It is difficult to plan for next year's crop when next year's rain has become extremely uncertain and temperatures keep rising.
City dwellers, like our political leaders, and the wealthy, like the 1%, are insulated from the effects of changing climate patterns. They are living in a wealth-supported bubble, and will be the last to die. But, living on a farm, I'm truly frightened for the rest of us as I shuffle through dust where there should be the sprouts of newly planted barley and watch the cattle just getting by on hay cut two years ago when rain was average. The chaos at the border in the US is only the beginning. No wall will save us when the fundamentals of water and food are scarce but we are too many.
29
@Jake Wagner
Agree, but alas, you are too late.
Name any US political party in Congress or any state legislature that discusses over-population in caucus, let alone has a bill for debate.
Name any large circulation media co. whose editorial board promulgates US or world pop. reduction.
Name any religion that calls for pop. reduction.
Name any country that officially considers itself over-populated. (China formerly tried to limit pop. growth with some very modest success, and the full powers of a very autocratic state. No more for China.) Most countries, US included, consider themselves under-populated, many officially.
Most people can't name the 5 largest countries by pop.; forget asking them to also give that country's current pop.
Homo Sapiens, in 300K years, has never used any advance in technology, to limit his population (see E.O. Wilson, 2012). A one-off condom or birth control pill use is not pop. reduction policy.
Some futurists claim world pop. will level off at 15 bil. at some point, as if 15 bil. solves the problem. They also aren't good at explaining how.
After 84 countries, I've never met any homo Sapiens who didn't want what I want: 3 meals/day, warmth in winter, cool in summer, medical care, and sex. I can afford all of it. But I'm 5% of the world's pop., consuming 25% of its resources. Saying my US consumption rate must be exported to the rest of the world is unsustainable.
Fortunately, I'll be dead within 10 years. Good luck to all those I'll leave behind.
6
If you're not waking up, it is now time. Climate change is here. I've never had a worse winter and the planet is still setting records for the warmest winter on record. First, we need to do something about the population growth. All countries need to adopt huge tax breaks for no children and big penalties for over one child. The militarizes world wide need to react to this crisis. It is a matter of survival of the human species. Governments will not meet the challenge.
People need to be required to live near work and use cars less. Every house need solar panels. The list is endless and unless we act now there will be no world for our children.
Take a look at Our Planet on Netflix.
59
@hd,
I agree with you 100%. Anything less than what you suggest is the same as doing nothing.
The continuing influx of economic migrants into the US represents a direct threat to the safety and security of the United States of America and its citizens. Those here illegally need to be deported and all future legal immigration suspended. That would drop our emissions a little.
So climate change is the new excuse that illegal immigrants will use to cross our southern border. Dems are dropping escaping from brutal gangs as a reason for asylum. Now it’s climate change.
57
@John Murray
There are plenty of different valid reasons people leave their homes, farms and/or families. A better policy for this government would be to put its efforts toward addressing climate change rather than denying it and blaming its victims.
43
@John Murray
"Climate change is rarely the sole factor in the decision to migrate. Violence and poverty are prime drivers, but climate change can be a tipping point, farmers and experts say."
39
Climate change is real whether you believe it or not. And Trump yelling 24/7 will not fix what’s happening right now at the border. It’s an American problem not just Republicans or Democrats.
3
Looks like this isn’t the final season of Game of Thrones after all.
15
It is well known that coffee growing is very vulnerable to climate change and perhaps the threat of shortages in coffee will finally get people to take action. Drinking coffee is something many people really care a lot about. Coffee appears to be one of the first crops that is being hit hard by climate change but there are others and many farmers around the world are adapting to climate change by growing different crops. Unless emissions are cut we are probably on the verge of a rapid increase in global temperature. It has taken over 100 years for global warming to increase 1C, but 2C could be here in only 20-30 years and 3C soon after that and then 4C before the end of this century. Rapid action to reduce emissions is paramount.
25
This is just the beginning.
Since no governments anywhere in the world are willing to take the bold actions necessary to mitigate climate change, developed countries will be dealing with millions of people from areas in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East whose home countries will largely be rendered uninhabitable. Drought, rising sea levels, extreme heat. It’s gonna drive a wave of humanity toward greener pastures.
You think immigration is an issue now? Wait a couple of decades; this ain’t nothing.
82
@Vin, So right you are.
Human migration as it is currently is a wee trickle.
23
@VinWe don't have to wait a couple of decades. All is happening faster than ever expected. You want to get depressed. Watch Our Planet on Netflex and then be very very frightened for the young of today.
1
In reply to Vin Nyc
Build the Wall.
There is a giant magnet attracting people across our southern borders. Its name is the Democratic Party which is, more or less openly, encouraging illegal immigration.
Unfortunately our current president lacks the political skill to combine firmness with compassion. His lack of skill makes him unable to sell his wall. And the Republican party is never going to allow cracking down on rich employers who hire people not authorized to work.
So we have a dangerous mixture here. Hatred of Trump in almost half of the population, and lack of skill on HIS part. There is little doubt that the Democrats are going to put their hatred of Trump above the well being of America.
China isn't divided, and we are. Which country is going to win? No prize for the correct guess.
38
@Ludwig
Yes, at least Trump recognizes that illegal immigration is a problem.
But he has not been effective at explaining that we have no choice but to stop illegal immigration. Part of that is his opposition to global warming. Part of it is his failure to be compassionate.
There are no winners in a battle over the Wall. The fact is that people in Latin America are indeed suffering. But on the other hand, without cutting birth rates that suffering will continue to increase even if the US has open borders.
We need a firm policy that denies entry for most illegal immigrants. But we also need to provide some leadership.
Governments in Latin America have made bad choices. They need to encourage small family size, and provide family planning facilities.
Unfortunately, we have lost a lot of time. We needed to provide access to birth control generations ago.
19
@Ludwig I'd love to hear where you find evidence that the Democratic Party encourages illegal immigration. I'd also appreciate knowing whether you can distinguish asylum-seekers from illegal immigrants.
2
@Ludwig: Nonsense. Democrats are not encouraging illegal immigration, openly or covertly. There have been bipartisan proposals to curb illegal immigration since Reagan, but it’s always been Republican lobbyists, legislators, politicians and/or presidents who thwarted them, because of greed (employers including Trump, seeking cheap labor) and abusing immigration for political ends (Trump, Republicans).
1
The problem of climate change is in its embryonic stages. I tend to believe scientists who predict these widespread disasters fifty years on. It is our children and grandchildren who will suffer the consequences if nothing is done now to reduce greenhouse gases. Why would we not believe what scientists are warning us about? Vote carefully!
22
If it is true that climate change is driving these desperate migrations to America, the future is here, it's here right now. Our Consulates may have been extremely incompetent and lazy in not understanding and reporting these local trends in their respective countries.
So, do we hideout behind big wall or do we get proactive with our agricultural expertise and try to ensure bountiful harvests in now hotter lands? I really cannot condone the stupidity of our government for not seeing this issue way in advance and getting a handle on it with the local government agencies. We need serious, dedicated public servant not political nonsense and favoritism. Governing is serious business and not for spoiled children.
32
This has been predicted by scientists for decades. Environmentalists have given their lives to change the paradigm. The powers that be - motivated by self interest / greed have thwarted both.
As always, it is the poor that suffer the most.
28
@E. Ochmanek Greed, unchecked by government, turns into parasitism which destroys humanity.
Symbiotic relationships, Democratic relationships, strengthen humanity. The GOP seems to have lost its way. Power, greed, accumulating wealth is everything for the GOP who are paid by the private sector handsomely for their election costs and other favors. The GOP 'The Grand Old Party' might well be called 'Greedy Old Parasites' in today's world.
I wonder if this could be just a case of the poverty and corruption in this part of the world forcing some to seek a better way of life. The american small farm is almost non existing also, and this is were these people come for a better way.
What bothers me is the deliberate twist put on almost every story in the news these days. By using this hot button of climate to fit every hart wrenching story into an avenue of fear and sway. I would think that these people, just as all of the other thousands are retreating from an area of the world that is self destructing.
15
@ron dion
It's not entirely "self-destructing". Many trends in Central America were set in motion by US policy over many, many years, well into the past.
13
@ron dion - good hypothesis. except ... you haven't explained how corruption and poverty can cause droughts, heat waves and super storms.
Only thing missing is blaming Trump for sunspots.
Climate change is a global event. As such, if we are willing to consider climate change impact as one of the qualifying situations for entry into the U,S., then we should apply the entry standards to all countries and not just to Central and South Americas. It is not right for the Central and South Americans to get preferential treatment just because of geographic proximity. And on a related note, we have a humanity crisis on the southern borders due to large number of migrants and asylum seekers that we are not equipped to handle. President Trump wants to send them to the sanctuary cities and states. Why aren't the immigrant welcoming places like California, New York, New Jersey, etc. volunteering to take on these migrants and asylum seekers? And for all the people calling for these immigrants to enter, why aren't they volunteering to sponsor these families?
21
@Chat Cannelle
"Why aren't the immigrant welcoming places like California, New York, New Jersey, etc. volunteering to take on these migrants and asylum seekers? And for all the people calling for these immigrants to enter, why aren't they volunteering to sponsor these families?"
They are. For example: Oakland's mayor just said anyone is welcome in Oakland, no matter who they are or how they got here. And families and faith communities in many parts of America sponsor and support refugees, and have been doing so for many year.
18
@Chat Cannelle: Uhm, didn’t Trump say the country is full? Didn’t Miller even want to curb legal immigration? Or is it now suddenly okay to let everybody in provided they go to the “sanctuary” cities, where they have been going already anyway? So now Trump is in favor of open borders? Isn’t that what he’s accusing Democrats of?
@Chat Cannelle
California is a sanctuary state, but it is overcrowded. Los Angeles is congested and lies under a sea of smog.
Where will the extra people go/
It would be better for Trump to simply say: We have run out of room. We have our own homeless, our own poor who cannot afford health care. The US did have abundant resources in the 19th century. But we have colonized the West and there is no room left.
That would be honest.
This is a plausible hypothesis. Climate change is behind recent increases in migration. Coffee which has specific and particular environmental requirements is the major crop. Such economic hardship and societal discord are not independent. Almost certainly, economic hardship leads to greater societal discord. Poverty means that the coffee farmers do not have the wherewithal to survive temporary downturns. Economic hardship and societal discord, together with poverty, push people to migrate. A culture of out-migration facilitates and encourages the decision to do so. Withdrawing aid to these farmers--or even threatening to do so--would exacerbate the process and increase migration.
10
I am a strong believer that one way to stem the flow of migration north from Latin America as well as from Africa to Europe is for the rich countries of the world to support and invest in the poor and third word countries. But I also feel and few pundits discuss the subject, that a population explosion in third word countries, especially in Africa and the Middle East, where large unemployment drive these people north to find employment. A smaller world will save a lot of problems.
19
@DO The U.S and Europe have been involved with poor and third world countries since the end of WW2. Billions of dollars have been spent on political wrangling, social programs and outright war with decidedly very mixed results.
Part of the population explosion is because we have been successful at preventing mass famine and disease and interregional wars do not go as unchecked.
3
@DO It's too bad that the Evangelical Right will never even consider supporting family planning of any type, anywhere. Boxed themselves into a corner, now didn't they?
@CNNNNC
I agree with you that the prevention of mass famine and disease control does not put a dent in the growth of world population, as did WWI and WWII, especially in Europe. Short of regional wars, some financial incentives and closed borders must be legislated to keep and control the movement of excess people out of their countries. Having 10 or more children and many wives, in some cases, with 50 plus percent unemployment, only contributes to the problem.
1
The world has warmed about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the last ~100 years. With all due respect to the scientists and the farmers quoted in this article, it is much more likely that they are experiencing changes in weather as opposed to climate. But using climate change to justify migration from Honduras makes for better headlines.
22
@Deadcat
The Industrial Revolution started 150 years ago. Strangely the climb in average temperatures correlates with this change in human activities.
1
@Deadcat: You confuse weather with climate. A trend over 100 years is climate. A rain shower today is weather.
2
The Great Lakes have had greater than average ice cover on average over the last five years. Is that climate or weather?
The problem is mostly overpopulation. If the Vinales family owned a farm of 10 sq miles 80 years ago and has 5-8 kids each generation, assuming just 4 stay they end up with 100 people to support. A 2 child policy would fix this. Few people to be supported by the land instead of exponentially more.
35
@Allright
That is exactly what I saw during six years in Honduras in the 1980s. The men don't want birth control or abortion and every generation divides up the land until there is no way they all can survive without sending as many family members as possible to the US to send cash. The situation then was bad but communications were not as good and there were not as many Hondurans in the US to tell their families how to get here. Now the demographics of my daughters school look pretty much like Honduras. The only humane solution is to abolish the borders and make Mexico and Central America part of the US politically and economically.
8
At least we know how red state farmers and trumplicans will treat their fellow American farmer refugees from other states suffering from climate change degradations, fires, floods, etc. They'll be treated in the same way as refugees from south of the border are treated - very badly and inhumanely.
Question will be how the Canadians will treat American farmer refugees as they migrate north in the near future. Maybe they will accept only blue farmers and farmers from south of trump's barrier. Keep the reds and self destructive trumplicans out for being so dogmatic and self destructive as to ignore the climate threat that is right in front of them. Let them till coal.
12
@PAN,
Are you joking? Is that really your analysis? That because citizens of this country refuse to feel obligated to take care of the entire world they won't take care of their fellow citizens?
I am an environmentalist and want serious action in regards to mitigating climate change. Our situation is dire- we cannot help those south of our nation. We will probably struggle to meet the needs of our own people. And Canada will not be able to help us either- they won't have the resources or the desire.
That is how people act- they take care of their own.
1
The agribusiness interests, with their state of the art irrigation systems are dropping the aquifers lower than the poor campasinos can drill.
4
I wonder if climate change has improved things for some farmers, in regions farther to the north and south of the planet.
8
@David Martin The U.S. midwest is flooded, with worse to come this month and May. Things are bad all over. I wonder if God is mad, or something? I mean, it obviously isn't Climate Change lol.
1
I see wine from Alaska and Siberia in our future.
6
That had already started: global warming allows Norwegian vineyards.
3
@Charlene
Norway has been much more temperate than the continental subarctic zones of Alaska and Siberia, thanks to the Gulf Stream. (That may change). That said, there is a LOT of agricultural potential in continental subarctic climates, it just requires different strategies to take advantage of cool but sunny springs, short (but long on photoperiod) frost-free seasons, and unpredictable fall weather.
Fairbanks is locally famous for its carrots, the sweetest ever (!) due to the combination of cool soils, long photoperiod, and good water.
7
@New World this has already started to happen. Largest harvest of raspberries coming from Siberia now
1
Non arable land coming this way folks no matter how much disinformation and magical thinking about climate change the Koch Bros, their GOP enablers and Foxy TV spew out to the benighted rural American voters.
As Bobby D said:” It’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard rain that’s gonna fall.”
9
@winthropo muchacho
As Bobby D said:” It’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard rain that’s gonna fall.”
Or not fall.
1
There are too many people on the planet. We have long passed the point where we need more people in the United States.
All immigration- legal and illegal- must end. Those here illegally need to be deported. Today.
Climate change is real and it is going to be devastating. If you have children you must, if you are moral, oppose the influx of people into our country. If you care about the future of the people (citizens) of this country you must oppose the influx of additional people.
30
Hope that policy isn’t in place when you or your children or grandchildren have to migrate from wherever you live to another country when climate change makes it impossible for you or them to live in the United States.
15
@Ordinary Citizen,
If people had to leave this part of the US there wouldn't be anywhere to go. There are 7 billion people on the planet- no country or region could support that. There would be mass death.
1
@willt26 Have you checked with your local businesses lately, the ones who can't find enough labor for the jobs they have? You can't have it both ways, although Trump preaches it. Zero unemployment means there AREN'T ENOUGH PEOPLE HERE. Thick, thick, thick.
The Republican farmers in Florida, Texas and California are the cause of these immigrants fleeing to the USA. They paid them low wages decades and still want cheap labor. Shame on them and their GOP ideology.
7
I didn’t know all farmers were Republicans.
15
Always find it odd to read concerns about overpopulation from people who are still with us. I guess solving that particular problem is for the other guy...
15
@EGD-This comment basically holds no relevance to the concern of overpopulation. Solutions regarding this issue do not involve reducing the size of people already existing which is cruel and inhumane. To solve overpopulation, we most reduce the size of future generations via family planning, free contraception, and the education of both women and men.
15
@Alex It's not the people who already live in the U.S. who are having more children than the replacement rate, it's the people who live in the third world countries who are having too many children and then they are trying to come to the US and Europe.
1
@EGD,
Many people have one child or none. People like that are doing something. Many people have two children. People like that aren't helping or hurting.
Many people have more than two children. They are selfish and destruction. No third child, or family with three children, should be accepted into the USA for immigration.
So now they aren't actually fleeing violence, they are just seeking better economic opportunity?
That is not a valid justification for asylum.
36
@John, The farmers are not asking for asylum; they're sneaking in. It's those who are fleeing violence who are asking for asylum. Two different categories.
15
So true. These poor farmers wouldn’t tell a lie. They will just sneak in to avoid breaking one of the 10 commandments.
7
Study after study show that climate change is & will be the number one future danger globally. Population explosion and lack of water will drive millions of people into involuntary mass migration. That said, accessible contraception and advise on crops that can be grown under these conditions would help. Demonizing them doesn’t help anyone. Can the USDA asvise them? Any agency? University? - Cornell is well regarded in the field. That is the solution, if we had toghtful leadership.
26
Hans Rosling made a great case and analysis about that. He was all about reducing child mortality and improving overall quality of the whole population of the world as the best way of population control.
That was the best well-thought and the most compassionate analyze I had ever heard.
6
@Ted
The Catholic Church and its teachings on (not) planning your family should be called to task on overpopulation. They have a huge presence and immense power in Central America.
27
We are the third largest country in the world, and China is the fourth largest. However, China has about 1 billion, 429 million people actually living there. We, with all of the empty land in the center of our country, have only about three hundred and some odd million people in our whole country. Most of our great country is empty, not full. Perhaps Trump wasn't deliberately lying when he said that our country is full. Perhaps he's just not any good at math.
We need farmers! Honduras (and other Central American countries) have many skilled farmers who desperately want to move their families to a safe place. Are you listening, Donald? Our country is NOT full, and we need farmers.
12
It's full our country is full
15
@W. Michael O'Shea, speak for yourself. Resources are finite, we are running out of water already (see the Ogalala aquifer & Colorado River). The US is indeed full, we already have 330 million people.
21
@W. Michael O'Shea-We actually don't need farmers. People employed in agriculture has been reduced from about ~50% of the population to around 2% currently. Increasing automation as well as improvements in agriculture productivity will only reduce this number further in the future. On another not "our great country is empty" is a view about as far from reality as one can get. Our infrastructure is stressed in overpopulated cities. According to the USDA, 51% of our land is utilized by agriculture. Our natural ecosystems occupy the remaining land not taken over by towns, and these need to be vitally conserved. Additionally, we are limited in growth due to finite natural resources, whether that be minerals, lumber, energy, or precious water. So no, most of our great country is not empty and I take it upon you to appreciate the empty lands that are filled by our valued wilderness, farms, and animals.
22
And so it begins.
Mass migration was one of the main reasons the Pentagon has considered climate change to be the number one threat to our national security for over a decade.
With it will come a lack of resources, shortages of food, spread of disease, and toppled or warmongering governments.
Climate change should still be the number one campaign issue, especially now that the economy is supposedly strong.
30
Very well said.
6
@D.A.Oh
Yes, but you need to control population growth to fight climate change.
1
This is the tip of the iceberg (no pun intended) of climate catastrophe. These farmers are the canary in the coal mine (please forgive all the metaphors) of the coming collapse in global food production.
21
If the surge at our border is due to climate change, get used to it. If the US immediately reduced our CO2 output to zero it would have no impact on the climate. We can put up all the wind farms and solar arrays that we want but unless we can convince the masses in third world countries that they don't deserve the same level of energy consumption as we do, CO2 will keep increasing.
17
I'm guessing the author likes coffee. If he had bothered to travel to the lowland areas of Honduras, Guatemala, or El Salvador he probably would have appreciated the large role played by African palm and sugar cane plantations in disrupting the rural agrarian cultures and economies there. Our environmentally-abusive demands for biofuels have directly and indirectly led to much of the social upheaval and ensuing emigration from these regions. (Though it's easier, even fun, to blame Donald Trump.) When tortillas are twice as expensive due to elevated corn prices from ethanol production (a Farm Bill gift to agribusiness) it makes it pretty easy for Cargill affiliates to buy up subsistence farms for the monoculture of sugar cane (also for ethanol) and palm oil [also in high demand for biodiesel or mass food production, since soybean oil is also being diverted away from food (where it additionally needs trans-hydrogenation) to biofuel production.] Don't blame family farmers here though. It is due to our energy demands and the support of agribusinesses, other multinational corporations and pro-globalization policies by BOTH democrats and republicans.
55
In ten to twenty years there will be massive shortage of agricultural products due to weather change. As the weather worsens into warning extremes will occur. Look for massive changes in ocean height with respect to flooding in the entire Northeast Coast. Winds will be much stronger on the coast line. The Hampton’s will be Non - Existent . There is no changing the cycle unfortunately. If you own property on the shoreline it is time to sell while you can. NYC is going to have massive flooding . Battery Park City is going under water. FDR drive closes down. It is not only an increase of CO2 in atmosphere it is directly tied to a change in the axis of the planet .
14
@Ralph Petrillo, which begs the question then for me, why do we even care what happens today? We kill ourselves trying to save only twenty years? The hope that the human creation exhibits sometimes is insufferable.
2
@Ralph Petrillo So how are we supposed to stop the planet from shifting on it's axis? I don't think that the "Green New Deal" will solve that problem.
Asylum from climate change? Every Central American and South American country along with Mexico will want into the US as climate change / global warming destroys the planet. Along with over population the unending flow with children in hand and body will be st our door.
19
@Neil
The whole population of China wants to move to the US due to the pollution that currently exists in China as cancer is increasing at extreme rates in China due to environmental pollution, unhealthy drinking water, low to poor air quality and corruption. The US if it does not watch its environment with better safety controls will end up with severe problems.
22
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning for a better climate...
10
@SV Close the borders now.
Everyone keeps trying to identify push factors driving Central Americans to migrate to the US. The push factors include insecurity, gangs, and climate change. I still believe that pull factors play a strong role. It is so easy to migrate and find relatively lucrative jobs in the US that allow sending significant resources back home. Make it harder for US companies to hire illegal immigrants and the problem will be partially resolved. The informal job market for gardeners and household help will be harder to resolve.
32
@Brian
Good comment. But it's a LOT easier said than done. Unless you have a large, year-round garden and a family cow (or are lactose-intolerant) most of your daily nutrition is provided by the hard work of illegal immigrants.
3
@Brian It won't be , if we pay our citizens a decent wage. It is a big lie to believe that hiring illegals is less expensive than hiring real Americans. I know that from personal experience based on real facts. It is a myth!
4
@Brian
Put yourself in a migrant's shoes. Pull factors are not enough. It is not "easy to migrate". Unless you consider walking 3000 miles easy. Most new immigrants from Central America struggle to make ends meet. They work low-pay, low-respect jobs. What would it take for YOU to leave your homeland, your friends, most of your family and move to a country where you don't speak the language and may not even get permission to live there legally. You'd have to be pretty desperate where you are to make that move.
This is the doomsday of climate change. The numbers will accelerate as their geography becomes unlivable. Every country south of here will be coming. What about the food that will become ever kite scarce and evaporate. . It’s happening. We are essentially becoming the little piece of shrunken ice that polar bears try to get to. But we will melt too.
9
Did anyone check this article for numbers? 1.4 million to migrate due to climate change in the next 3 decades is miniscule, and the border is showing a migration of 100,000 per month or 1.2 million per year. That would mean less than 1 migrant per 30 is migrating due to climate change.
I'm sympathetic to both forced migration and climate change causes, but this particular article is clickbait only.
33
@ondelette
Yes, only a tiny portion of the population of Latin American countries like Guatemala is seeking asylum. But the problems they are fleeing afflict the entire population. And we should be concerned about the entire population of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
The only realistic approach which tackles the majority of the poor is one which cuts down birth rates. There is no other way.
4
There are labor shortages in Honduras according to the article. "The exodus of farm workers has worsened already serious labor shortages in western Honduras." Could it be the pay is too low for people to work there when they can make so much more in the US?
63
@as
You combined two separate aspects. The pay there is too low -- it's too low to live on, hence despite their attachment to home they cannot live there. And the pay in the U.S. is higher, even compared to higher prices, and especially if you know how to live on next to nothing.
11
Most of the farm workers in this region, and many Central American regions, work in agricultural commodities that have prices dictated by the futures market. Because of this, the farm owners cannot pay laborers more due to the already extremely low price for the product the market sets. Coffee on the C-Market has been below $1.00 for over six months. That dollar is expected to cover land management, picking, and processing, and anything left is to support their families. There is just not enough to squeeze out of that dollar to allow anyone on the producing end of the supply chain to generate enough money to stay in the industry.
9
@as
Reducing a complicated problem to a single factor--as you have done here--will not solve it. Moreover, you have reduced immigration to a single factor which directly supports the lies, demonization and fear mongering of the present administration. What are you really saying here? You are saying that these immigrants are dishonestly representing their motivations for coming. The Democrats support safe, fair, humane and sane border immigration policies. The border was secure before Trump was inaugurated. Many factors play a role in immigration, including economics.
4
I could be wrong, but perhaps among those thousands of immigrants fleeing to our southern border there might be more than a few hardworking farmers...not the drug dealing murderers and rapists President Cheeto imagines?
15
@David Keys
Don’t ever recall Trump saying the masses swarming our border were exclusively drug dealers, murderers, or rapists.
Criminal statistics would show that those types are among those who are here illegally.
5
Criminal statistics would show they are present in any group of people, no matter what the category.
1
@David Keys
Yes, many of them are hardworking. But over time, privation leads to violence.
Consider the following possible choice. Farmers starve because they cannot grow enough grain. So they grow poppies instead and sell drugs to the cartels. The result is gangs and violence.
Individuals can try to be good, but a population explosion causes groups of people to eventually turn to violence.
This was true in Egypt of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties who savagely fought the Hittites and Sea Peoples as resources became scarce, and then during the reign of Ramesses III the government ran out of food for the priests running the state religion, and Egypt's period of dominance came to an end.
The people sometimes turn to war. But in Mexico they have sometimes become drug runners. There are many reactions. But overpopulation always leads to a bad end.
Having grown up in South Texas where dry land farming is the main industry, I never met a happy farmer: it either rains too much or doesn't rain enough.
The main reason immigrants are fleeing their home countries is corruption and crime. Not climate change. Trying to eke out a living on 5 acres with manual labor and low market prices has nothing to do with climate change.
The left is trying to manufacture a crisis where none exists. Everyday there is news about incorrect modeling and assumptions. In Nature last month there was a good article on how scientists added up the total aggregate of VOCs and aerosols as inputs for their models. The Nature study demonstrated clearly that this was not accurate due to recombination and elimination of x% of the original calculated numbers.
Enough of the fear and junk science. Put the blame on the root cause: corruption and crime.
84
@Jon Galt Ah, John Galt, perhaps most are fleeing those countries due to crime and corruption, but these poor farmers have valid reasons too. Apparently you deny climate changes are putting some areas into crisis.
"Enough of the fear and junk science." Good thing you will probably be long dead before the impending global climate will be brutal. I know I will be, but I care deeply for those having to clean up what deniers like you refuse to address as reality.
122
@Jon Galt
"Everyday there is news about incorrect modeling and assumptions." Really... where? And your source would be? Link please.
How about this "March Temperatures in Alaska: 20 Degrees Hotter Than Usual" https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/09/climate/alaska-abnormally-hot-march.html. But don't worry, the climate is not changing. Yeah, right.
I'm 66 years old and I know the climate is changing because I have observed it in the three places I have lived during my life. New York, Illinois, and New Hampshire. It is not "junk science", it's reality... whether you like it or not.
160
@Jon Galt, I, too, grew up in a rural town where dry farming was the only means available. Yes, indeed, there is rampant crime and corruption in central and south America.
But, precisely how does crime & corruption negate the scientific reality of accelerated climate change? IF you would take the time and endure the difficutly of traveling to these central American countries, tour the rural areas, speak with the farmers, observe their crop yields by examining their annual production data (these folks are not stupid, they weigh their production and sell it AND keep records of annual sales) you would find that climate change is adding to the misery and these regions.
To put a sharp point on the issue of climate change forcing increased migration of persons in affected areas: Visit your library and search for the annual reports by the Department of Defense beginning in the GHW Bush administration. You will find these reports have increasingly singled out accelerating climate changes as an increasing threat to our national security and global peace. It is now widely acknowledged by our defense agencies that the Syrian civil war was prompted by climate change that has been drying the Bakkah Valley resulting in migration of the tribal people of that region moving to Damascus where a hostile tribe has met them.
93
In the mid-1930’s the US had the hottest summer on record to date. We had the dust bowl, crop failures, farm failures, extreme weather and significant migration. And yet we still seem to have enough food production to feed ourselves and export to the rest of the world. Go figure!
7
The dust bowl was a man made ecological catastrophe. Watch the Ken Burns documentary. They plowed up the entire native grassland that was Great Plains and planted unirrigated fields of crops that couldn’t possible grow there. It was solved in part by New Deal federally led reengineering of the land, not by just a few rainy seasons alone.
46
@Andrew Exactly. The history of the Dust Bowl is a history of man's greed resulting in an ecological disaster. The reclamation of those lands and recovery from the Dust Bowl is a great success story.
8
@Concerned!
In the 1930’s record numbers of people were starving and jobless due to the Great Depression.
8
As I travel about Columbia County, New York and see all of the empty, abandoned farmland I have to wonder why wouldn't we offer these Central American farmers the 21st C. equivalent of "40 acres and a mule"?
Throughout the northeast US and elsewhere once productive farmland is laying fallow with the small towns that once were supported by famers now emptying out.
And here on our doorstep are a growing number of farmers seeking new land as climate change renders their traditional farmsteads unsustainable.
It is long past time we removed the demonizing bigot from the White House whose racism prevents us from welcoming in these land-seeking agricultural entrepreneurs. We have the land and infrastructure to crease a win-win for these farmers and our rural economies if only we would wake up.
25
Farm land in New England is not productive as compared to the fields of the great plains. That’s why it was all abandoned at the exact time of westward expansion. Short growing seasons plus hilly rocky soil. If it could be done profitably now it would be. You certainly can’t grow coffee in upstate NY.
18
@George
That allegedly unproductive land is privately owned.
I realize things like property rights are no barrier to the aspirations of your average ‘progressive’ but this idea is completely unworkable without confiscation.
14
I remember 50-100 acre dairy farms in Delaware County. Now abandoned with tall trees in what once was the pastures.
6
A number of issues here. However, the biggest is likely overpopulation. The population of Central America has exploded. In a agrarian society, this is a recipe for disaster. It is more politically correct to talk about climate change as the cause, but, it is a factor only. Population is the bigger problem.
41
@Robert Spot on the Elephant always in the room
1
A lot of comments here blame overpopulation. That is mostly caused by medical science people are living longer, not by high birth rates. If we want to deal with overpopulation stop creating medicines and procedures to keep people alive.
4
@Reflections9
It's a better idea to preserve the lives of the older ones, especially in an agrarian society. The older farmers have the experience and knowledge of many years of variable conditions, making them more able to adapt to a few years of intense change.
Universal birth control is so much more effective to control overpopulation and reduce poverty.
12
@Myrasgrandotter
China tried that and is now back tracking as younger people are better at learning new methods and are more productive. The average world lifespan in 1960 was 52 today its 72.
2
@Reflections9
A new plague you say?
2
Mass migration due to the effects of climate change is just barely getting underway. There will be tens of millions on the move world-wide before the half century mark.
The irony in this is that climate change itself is caused by the effects of human over-population. This appears to be an unstoppable feedback loop.
16
Really? Please let me know when I can grow mangoes and bananas in my mid-Atlantic back yard. Also, the Canadian prairie farmers would love to grow corn where wheat only grows now. Watermelons in Saskatoon?
7
@Mike
Long, long, long ago bananas grew here in Oregon.
I’m not looking forward to a climate that will allow that to happen again.
6
All the more reason to build that wall—now.
17
This article presented no data on the changes in the volume of coffee produced or its price. If coffee production is down because of climate change why are commodity prices falling as reported in the article. Less production and constant demand should lead to higher prices. I am dissappointed that the NYT would publish an article based on anecdotes and not facts. I am open to real information on climate change impacts, but this is just playing with reader's emotions on immigration and climate change.
15
Dems need to connect their immigration reform plans to this reality--now!
6
@Ira Shorr There will be no immigration reforms while Republicans control any part of the government.
5
"Central American Farmers Head to the U.S., Fleeing Climate Change"
Really! Are you telling me Central American Farmers have never ever experienced drought?
BTW, Central Americans should first seek asylum in Mexico.
22
@Sam Freeman
Mexico IS central American
3
@TimToomey
Central America (Spanish: América Central, pronounced [aˌmeɾika senˈtɾal], Centroamérica [sentɾoaˈmeɾika]) is located on the southern tip of North America, or is sometimes defined as a subcontinent of the Americas,[1] bordered by Mexico to the north, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south. Central America consists of seven countries: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. The combined population of Central America has been estimated to be 41,739,000 (2009 estimate)[2] and 42,688,190 (2012 estimate).[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_America
1
Given that last growing season some crops rotted in the fields for lack of workers to harvest them, I would think a substantial number of knowledgeable farmers, willing to do this difficult work, would be welcome here. Crops rotted because available citizens were unwilling to do the work! What is wrong with us that we are unable to channel these people to the locations most in need of them?
49
@Jean Sims
Available citizens made un available because of absurdly low wages that are the result of an industry that exists by leveraging the most desperate people and nations in order to keep market prices artificially low. The race to the bottom has destroyed American farmers. Bringing in more desperate laborers is not the answer.
28
@Jean Sims
Americans won't do the work at prevailing wages and not because of the work. I guess we are ok with feudal like wages for farm workers.
18
@Jean Sims, could the root cause be the idea that American (and international) consumers seek the lowest prices possible along with ever growing supplies due to technology and economies of scale of Big Agribusiness? These factors as much as any, led to the big disruption in Manufacturing we experienced in the 80s and 90s. I see no reason to think the forces wouldn’t disrupt the ah business, which has always been a risky business.
2
In any given developing nation farmers are paid poverty wages by Western corporations. Despite the refrain of coffee companies that they pay decent salaries based on local living standards, most farmers only survive through remittances; money sent to farmers from family members living abroad.
The show UnderCover Boss, showcased an Oregon Coffee Company "doing good" in El Salvador with feelgood "fair trade" initiatives, etc. but when the owner of the Coffee Company offered a gift to a farmer named Alberto. The farmer said he would rather have a scholarship for his son to study in the United States.
This disconnect is the same story the world over, climate change or not; importers who create buzzwords and sleek feelgood logos to hide the struggle which is the reality of every farmer.
Why can't we hear from the farmers via a statement from their coop, collective, etc.? Perhaps they be economically punished if we know how deficient their wages are?
It is troubling to hear that farmers are looking at growing cacao. With the increased production of cacao, cacao prices have falling 80% adjusted for inflation since 1980 and these farmers are looking to place yet more cacao on the market which only guarantees less money for all other farmers.
This is the stranglehold in which the Western companies and consumers have the farmers. Meanwhile "we say" it's climate change which is the real problem, yes, but what do THEY say?
26
@Dukie Bravo The most obscene example of farmers around the world planting whatever they want is palm oil.
People-- not just farmers, corporate entities-- are so greedy, so hungry for as much cash as they can get-- they have in a few decades decimated whole rainforests and ALL THE LIFE that was in them in Borneo and elsewhere - for palm oil plantations.
It is found in shampoo and Girl Scout Cookies, soap and skim milk.
Do we really need these things more than entire rain forests?
Why palm oil is so bad:
https://www.ecowatch.com/why-is-palm-oil-so-bad-1881907014.html
13
@M You stated that the corporations are abusing the rain forest by means of palm trees. Then you say palm oil is " so bad". Wouldn't it be the corporate policies that are "bad" not the farmers or their products?
If I abuse medicine, it is not the medicine that is bad. If so, by that very logic couldn't we say diamonds, hydroelectric power, laptops are bad.
When I travel, I eat palm oil, but at the same time I have access to palm nut trees growing in my courtyard; nothing bad about palm oil.
I disagree with the developing world being the target for our campaigns and censure because it is the Western companies that introduced clear cutting and massive plantations to feed their nation's appetite.
The Dutch East India company introduced plantation farming to Indonesia. One of the biggest benefactors being today's Unilever, co-headquartered in The Netherlands who helped introduce plantation farming. And they aren't alone.
Will it stop? Of course not. The Western world is built upon exploitation of limited resources from the developing world. At all costs we sponsor someone to obtain the resources for our survival, whether through conflict, former hut taxes, puppet leaders, sponsored religious conversions, Western schools, etc. Then we point our fingers and call their resources bad.
Could you imagine the US without coffee, chocolate, and processed food? Of course not. That is why there will always be a piecemeal solution that merely presents more problems.
6
@M I was in the Peace Corps in Northwestern Borneo from 1967-68. I had a chance to fly over the Borneo rain forest and see what this forest really looked like at that time.
I was shocked when I flew over the same area in 1999 and again in 2014. Gone was the rain forest and rows and rows and rows of palm oil trees existed.
When one goes from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to the KLIA international airport, all that is seen is rows and rows of palm oil trees.
I worry about the future of this planet.
The clearing of these forests is a big factor in global warming, given how much carbon dioxide (CO2) trees store when left alone. Once forests are cut, tons of CO2 heads skyward where it does the most harm. Also, when not replaced by palm oil plantations, rainforests help maintain water resources by absorbing rainfall and then releasing it into streams and rivers, thus minimizing flooding and soil depletion.
7
Talking about climate change is in essence talking about gun control. Scientists have been telling us about climate change,it’s not a hoax and yet the powers to be act as if there children will somehow be spared from the devastation that is here. None of us are going to able to hide out on another planet , let’s get real.
We need to be addressing climate change with the urgency of the Marshal Plan. Inaction will kill us all
Stop worrying about the cost because of there is no planet what does it matter.
93
@Tony
This is an often-ignored point. It does not matter how nice one's furniture is if the house is underwater.
20
@Tony
link to a definitely alarmist yet very relevant blog :
arctic-news.blogspot.com
lots of current climate data, updated regularly
6
Climate change is just the planet being angry at us and deciding to take back its own. The problem is not greenhouse gases. Its 8+billion people. The planet will take care of that and get it back to a more sustainable 4 billion. Or a lot less and humanity will basically have a restart. When it comes down to humanity vs. Earth, Earth will always win.
21
@bored critic
The notion of ‘population control’ is a taboo subject on both sides of the political spectrum. One side screams ‘baby killers’ and the other side screams ‘racists’.
Meanwhile, the burden of too many human beings weighs heavily upon the earth. In the not too distant future, the planet will undoubtedly shake us off like so many unwanted fleas.
8
@bored critic
The planet (as we know it) was set on a doomsday course with the advent of the industrial age. The carbon in the atmosphere didn't get there over night. The US is the largest contributor to the atmospheric carbon from the burning of fossil fuels. There is no way to remove it and turn it back into the fossil state it had been in for 300 million years. Every human on earth could go extinct and the atmospheric carbon damage would still be there. Of course the non-sentient planet doesn't care.
3
The geographic rate change in temperature N-S in the US is about 1C/40 miles.
So drive south about 100 miles. The average temps are 2C higher. Do you see more endemic disease? Depopulation? Any humans left alive?
If you moved 1 mile every year, at the other end of the street, could you survive the change in climate?
Draw your own conclusions.
Biologists say that if a species cannot adapt to a 2C/century change, it shouldn't be around to start with.
And by the way, the measured rate of change for the last century, with a huge increase in industrial emissions, was only 1C, according to the IPCC.
12
@novoa
Most learned statement I’ve read in the Times in a decade.
2
@novoad Could you provide a source on that, "Biologists say that if a species cannot adapt to a .....it shouldn't be around to start with?" Thought not.
5
@novoad: You're right. We shouldn't be around to 'start with' and we won't be too much longer. I just feel so sorry for those humans and other species who did nothing to increase temperatures - besides breathe.
3
This article paternally suggest that America is and/or should be the "white saviors" for the South Americans. I find it to be quite disgusting to believe that the only way for these people to have a better life is to come to the USA to "avoid" climate change. There is another pole on the other end, they could be migrating southward as the shift happens... but they are not. Why you may ask... it is because this is not a refugee crisis... its not a climate crisis...... it is an economic migration crisis. I believe these folks are capable of working inside their home countries to better their existence. To suggest that the only way they can have a better life is to come here is as stated above, paternalistic and demeaning to these people.
33
Is there anything bad in this world that isn’t caused by global warming, global cooling or climate change?
7
Perfecto. The USA desperately needs farmers, as the industry is aging out. Oh, I forgot, that would be a rational thing to do. But since it might wilt some white people in Nebraska, it's out of the question.
11
@Albert Einstein. Where did you get the idea we need farmers?
3
@Albert Einstein
Somehow ‘progressives’ think only white people have farms...
3
Want to live in an overpopulated, increasingly impoverished, culturally divisive, socially chaotic and violent third world country ....without having to leave home?
If so, you’re in luck....because that’s precisely where our country is headed. Enjoy!
33
@Shenoa: As long as it’s “governed” by Republicans, it surely will be!
5
@Shenoa, You are spot on here with this. We are slipping into chaos and anarchy and looking/feeling more like Brazil each and every day. But hey they open up ethnic restaurants so it's all ok.
2
OECD nations have been and continue to ignore accelerated climate change. Universally, the vast majority of their citizens ignore the issue. Not only do these culpable parties ignore the issue, they refuse to take measures that will (hopefully) provide for a sustainable future for their children and grand children.
2
@Jim. Except climate change isn’t accelerated. Remember when you used to call it global warming but the data didn’t support that?
2
No, the term was changed from “global warming” to “climate change” in the hope that climate-change deniers were just easily confused and, if it could just be explained simply enough, they wouldn’t keep blocking the efforts to save ourselves.
Right.
The more I hear why Central Americans are heading to the US, the less I think the Democrats have a chance in 2020.
18
Why? The Democrats are willing to address the root causes. They want to address climate change. They want to give aid so people stay in Central America, and not come here illegally. Some Republicans do too. Trump does not seem on board with these measures. He wants to incite racism and potential violence. Violence is where his messaging is headed, eventually. As he's likely the Republican candidate next year, I don't see why anyone thinks Trump and Republicans will solve this problem. Building a medieval style wall is not the solution.
6
Trumpism, with its toxic stew of racism, division, dishonesty and personal self-interest, includes several mutually incompatible policy ideas - pretend climate change doesn’t exist, cut aid to the countries where it is hitting hardest and reduce the flow of refugees.
That combo is impossible in the actual world. Reality always wins.
11
@David--why is it the US responsibility to provide aid to these countries?
5
@David I am suspecting Trump knows the future violent result, the assault (on many levels) of caravans of people and the social unrest that will bring. So he's planning to do whatever will result in that.
He knows how Europe was affected by the migration from war, terrorism, famine and starvation in the Middle East and Africa. He saw the social and political results in Europe. I sense he wants that here. That is how he can stay in power, and after him, others that are like him. That is our likely future here, though it's not too late to change it.
2
@bored critic: Because historically, we've preferred that our sphere of influence not be intruded upon by other big players like Russia or China.
3
Crisper-Cas9 could solve all the worlds agricultural problems if rich white people would stop preventing GMOs from being socially acceptable. We could make coffee that grows in a swamp and you can use wonderful machines called dryers to dry the beans. I guess a concrete pad wont work but I'm sure a tumble dryer will.
Liberals seem to believe that we can do nothing besides reduce carbon use to deal with climate change. I think we need to realize that climate change is happening regardless and that we need to adapt as well as reduce carbon use.
6
Come to Los Angeles, you are welcome here. We are not hateful. We are not spiteful. We ALL come from immigrants and are grateful.
7
@Daniel, you’e not from anywhere near LA for you’ve obviously never been stuck in traffic on a freeway here to be saying such a thing.
4
@Daniel
Ah, yes, California.
Thirteen percent of the nation; 30% of the welfare load.
One reason I’m abandoning SoCal after over 37 years for greener pastures in two weeks.
Fed up with all this ‘progress.’
6
Let’s just adopt Honduras and tell its parents to get lost. Kids, meet your new brother and sister, you don’t mind sharing your rooms, I’m sure.
3
That is actually what I am thinking. Adopt a child who will appreciate things and will ultimately speak two languages—whereas even a lot of smart people only speak one. A very good idea.
1
It was predicted long time before. People must awake.
U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked
June 29, 1989
https://www.apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0
UNITED NATIONS (AP) A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
2
@areader. Out realize the UN just wanted more money from us, right?
Unfortunately the farms cannot be transported.
Sadly they have to be left behind.
There has to be a better way.
1
If America is going to survive, the obvious conclusion is that we must annex Canada.
3
@New World: Please don't give Trump any ideas. He might go to war with our neighbor to the north.....
3
Climate change in Central and South America is the real reason why Frump wants the wall. Actions speak louder than words and Trump has had work done on his properties that clearly acknowledges his awareness of climate change. He wants to keep the hordes from crossing the border as various countries to our south collapse due to climate change.
2
@Jim Tokuhisa Interesting. Tell us more about this work he did on his properties. Regarding the wall ... welcome to The Walking Dead approach to dealing with things for society. If he watches the show, he should know you can never keep hordes of any kind out, and your fellow neighbors are also a danger.
1
It seems like, other than mitigating climate change, the best safeguard against a rush of migrants in the future is welcoming all migrants today. This will both subtract people from future migrant flows and increase the incumbent population so the same number of migrants in a future year would be a smaller percentage of the total population. Math can settle a lot of debates.
3
@Alan--hysterically brilliant. Best laugh i had today. Thank you
3
“But farmers, agricultural scientists and industry officials say a new threat has been ruining harvests, upending lives and adding to the surge of families migrating to the United States: climate change.”
Wait! Trump and the GOP say that climate change is a hoax. The proof is in the pudding so to speak. We can do immigration( as we should) but not whole countries. This development is monumental. Meanwhile the GOP is dismantling our greenhouse gas prevention/reduction measures hand over fist. Smart huh?
1
Another illegal reason for migrating, perhaps some large corporation could buy up these farms and provide irrigation to make them farms again. And yes we don't owe them any assistance and surely not a home either.
4
@vulcanalex irrigation isn't necessarily the problem. It's temperatures and weather patterns.
We do owe other portions of the world (technically the megacorps, as well as the consumers) for not being more smart about how items are produced and consumed. The ecological footprint per capita in the USA is the fifth worst in the world and we're twelfth in the world when it comes to CO2 emissions (although, curiously enough, that information is pretty dated): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ecological_footprint ;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita
Too many people. Need to go from 8 billion to 4. And it will happen. We need climate change. The sooner the better.
6
I thought that the US farmers were subject to the destroying ravages of climate change.
How come tens of millions of them don't flee to Central America, or maybe to Canada, to survive?
At least the US population could move north inside the US. Instead, it moves the other way, in droves...
6
@novoad The U.S. population is shifting significantly. Rural youth see a bleak future and they go to the cities.
3
Because Uncle Sam doles out billions to farmers to grow nothing. Cut off federal farm subsidies and just see what happens. Poor countries in Central American don’t have the funds to buy off their farmers.
2
And you can be sure that climate change and mass migration will get a lot worse. Bolsonaro, Brazil’s new President, is intent on destroying the Amazon rain forest, and Donald Trump sees any attempt to protect the environment as adverse to his agenda. Andrew Wheeler, former coal industry lobbyist who replaced Scott Priutt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, is a critic of limits on greenhouse gas emissions and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and former oil and gas lobbyist David Bernhardt was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday to lead the Interior Department. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
8
Climate change and food insecurity are caused by one thing - overpopulation, and population growth that is out is sync with a region’s or the planet’s ability to support the demands of all these people. When families in Central America stop having 7 or 8 kids - as NYT articles have recently reported - and the population of Guatemala ends its current 10 year, 12 million person explosion trend, we can discuss the impact of climate change on these farmers. Until then there’s a far bigger problem to be solved, one which nobody seems to want to address as the root cause of the horrible living conditions at the root cause of mass migrations.
27
For millennia the Ancient Maya created one of the world's greatest civilizations in one of the toughest environments on Earth.
The tropical rainforests of Southern Mexico. Guatemala, Honduras and Belize was their space and time for marvels of science and technology and culture and language.
A few centuries before the Europeans arrived a great catastrophe befell the Maya. Climate change? Environmental degradation? Volcanism? Warfare? No one knows for sure.
There were an estimated 100 million Natives in America before Columbus. A couple of centuries later there were only 10 million of them left. About the same number of dead as in World War I and II combined.
Both MS- 13 and 18th Street were born and bred in Los Angeles. Before being deported back " home".
All of these countries suffer from American drug addiction and the profits from making and dealing those drugs along with an American gun fetish.
2
@Blackmamba, I take it you drink tea and not coffee?
1
I'm not a climate change scientist, but an observer ... when are we going to at least try and curb the population growth like China did? I realize and accept that climate change is becoming more and more catastrophic to all nations and I think one way to at least tolerate the future and current effects is to lesson the demands that we humans have put on the earth's resources. Because at this rate we will soon exhaust every thing hospitable as we know it. There will be wars over water, land, and living space ... migrations the likes of which we have never seen before. It's coming.
17
@Carol Kennedy--the problem is not so much population control in the US. We are below replacement level, 2 parents are averaging less than 2 children. The issue is with the rest of the world where poor and impoverished countries have 5, 6, 7, 8 children. How do we get them to stop?
5
@bored by helping them develop their economies and educate their own populations. All ‘highly developed’ countries have low birthrates. In agricultural societies more children = more unpaid helping hands at harvest time. In societies with poor public health, having more children is an insurance policy that some of them will survive into adulthood. This is a universal and well understood demographic dynamic.
1
@Andrew,
Great theory! Too bad the greater balance of the facts don't support the argument that educating people leads to lower population growth.
Sure we can point to about 5 decades worth of demographic data from about 12 countries and see that rising 'education' leads to lower birth rates. But we would also have to look at the hundreds of years of data from every country where rising education corresponded to increasing birth rates (all the data except for the 5 decades from 12 European countries and Japan).
Education, throughout the world, didn't start in 1950. 'Development' didn't start then either. And how is 'highly developed' defined?
And based on population growth numbers most parents, throughout the world, haven't had to worry that much with children dying in infancy.
One thing we Americans must keep in mind is that global warming affects the entire planet, so whatever happens in Central America it will also impact the US. It's a question of time. Unfortunately, this is another fake story to feed on the narrative for allowing waves of "refugees" into the US. A casual look at the people on those caravans, and listening to their reasons for coming to the US (including the Africans, Cubans and Haitians who recently fought Mexican immigration authorities), one can see that the vast majority of them are not farmers. Most of them come from urban or semi urban centers. That's according to the Mexican immigration officials who in the process of granting the migrants transit visas to the US border, they have to give basic information. And by the way, those are the most up-to-date, real time statistics. Those people are moving here because their own countries have become failed nations due to years of exploitation by their own politicians who keep the people submerged in ignorance. Regardless of the fact that the US is a nation of migrants, our system of government and its institutions are too frail to face the modern onslaught of mass migrations.
6
Unfortunate as the farmers' situation is, it is hard to claim they are seeking asylum when the arrive at the American border. They are economic refugees seeking a better situation, not people being persecuted by governments, gangs, or tribes.
7
Why not pay the farmers to lay out their land for 1 year and fertilize? Growing the same crop, be it short root or long, over and over destroys the soils' nutrients.
Form a co-op and lay out each member's farm for one year, on a rotating basis. Work together to solve the problem, instead of running away from it.
But that would actually require some logic and understanding of best farming practices, something city slickers will never understand.
7
What is it about climate change that you do not understand?
3
Sorry, who is supposed to pay? The government of Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere? And didn’t Trump just cut of all aid? Yah that’s what I thought.
1
@Alan Sorry for not getting back sooner, I was on my farm fixing a water tank. Which part of good farming practice don't you understand?
Not one numerical value stated as to temperature or rainfall in the entire article. Sorry, I’m not convinced without evidence. Not one number as evidence of the change in temperature or rainfall. I didn’t learn anything about climate change in Honduras. How hard could it be to tell me the change?
8
Average temperatures have risen by about two degrees Fahrenheit in Central America over the past several decades, making the cultivation of coffee difficult, if not untenable, at lower altitudes that were once suitable.
9
@Shamrock
Reread paragraph 21.
1
@David The article states clearly that there are no historical temperature records for the area. Shamrock was asking for MEASURED data, not imagined data.
2
It is fairly easy to look up historic climate data on Honduras (or anywhere else) on The World Bank Climate Change Portal. I did take a look and if I compare the periods 1901-1930 and 1991-2016 I see very little change in temperature or rainfall. The data is produced by the University of East Anglia. I'm not saying climate change is not happening - but it would appear that at the moment it is unlikely to be the cause of any change in farming yields in Honduras.
According to the World Bank Portal, there will be drastic climate change in Honduras in the next 40 years - it just has not happened yet.
I'm on the side of the "Greens" but this relentless and rather dishonest politicization of climate change is depressing for someone with a science background.
Here is a suggestion for the next Democratic administration:
Learn from Trump - put a carbon tax on all imports from China.
9
@kenw
"...I see very little change..."
Massive change is not a prerequisite. Coffee plants are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature and rainfall. A little change is all it takes to develop coffee rust and destroy a harvest, and a way of life.
10
This is just the beginning of mankind migrating from areas that will become uninhabitable and unable to sustain any kind of farming. If you look around the world it can be seen that migrations are already beginning. This, of course, will lead to unstable relations between countries where people are leaving and where people are going. Aside from trying to curtail climate change and global warming the issue of immigration is already a global issue but another issue is where the worlds food will come from. The Bread Basket of America may well move to Canada! It is imperative that world governments address these issues to avoid chaos.
11
@Climatedoc
It's people migrating from countries that have been unable or unwilling to build decent infrastructure and rule of law to countries who have. A little of this is ok.
But there is a tipping point where there is too much and the host country starts to look just like the source country.
In this whole series on climate change, this is the first one that has hinted at the need for policy actions to adapt our civilization to the new climate.
It's time to stop talking about preventing climate change. It's already happening. We need to start working on survival.
As a farmer, I can tell you that very few people will still be willing to risk their livelihood on the weather in a decade or two. If no one can make a living farming, who is going to grow our food?
7
Climate change is real and damaging; but frankly, if farmers in Honduras can be considered refugees, anyone can be considered a refugee, and borders have no meaning. Yes climate change is affecting their crops-- which seems to be exclusively coffee, a plant highly sensitive minor fluctuations. There are far hardier crops they could grow which could take anything Honduras threw at them and ask for more.
If we can't say no to people in what is still-- and will continue to be-- one of the most fertile growing regions in the world, how can we say no to anybody?
12
@Alexander
Them today, us tomorrow.
2
This is one of the ways climate change affecting the world will play out - slowly. And Republicans will muddy the situation by dismissing the science. Another way damage from climate change will play out is through property damage from storms and floods. That will raise cries of helping our fellow Americans who have suffered a hardship. And the world will continue pumping CO2 into the atmosphere because the US will not lead.
12
This is the state of the science: “Some climate scientists say that in the absence of long-term meteorological data, it is hard for them to say with certainty whether the increasing variability is caused by long-term changes in the region’s climate. But, they say, they are leaning in that direction.” Not a very solid basis for climate alarmism.
7
"Some climate scientists".... There will always be "some" who for reasons of their own feel the need to disagree with overwhelming evidence and learned opinion. Many of those "some" are probably in the pay of the oil companies.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way. This is a war we must all fight, if you're not up for it, there are plenty who are.
11
@Nick The absence of long-term meteorological data is a fact. You chose to believe in imagined data, but that is not a basis for action.
People who only use reliable data are called scientists. They are NOT as you imply in the pay of oil companies.
People who use imagined data are called activists. Please make sure that the war you are fighting on behalf of activists is not using any public money and imposes nothing on others. Make it a private war.
4
Years ago I took care of many patients with lung cancer who told me they had kept smoking because “not all the research showed cigarettes cause lung cancer. “ The research they trusted had been completely disproven by all but a few tobacco company charlatans. But as long as there was one “study” out there, they kept on puffing.
Today’s deniers are claiming that climate change is not happening or if it is there is nothing humans can do about it. Why are they so sure? Because there are a very small percent scientists who have concluded that there is nothing to worry about. So the deniers just relax and keep on voting Republican!
When smokers denied the research, they harmed only themselves. Climate change deniers harm all of us as they vote for politicians who are ripping apart our efforts to slow down the damage being done to our world.
1
One of the more pernicious characteristics of climate change is the incremental decline of society in general, running almost exactly parallel with the deterioration of the biosphere. Great human migrations from Central America, along with a United States that has become increasingly unmoored from its constitutional and moral origins, are all of a piece.
The implication is that as the effects of climate change continue to worsen, our capacity to respond to these challenges lessens proportionally. History is replete with examples of civilizations that succumbed to environmental degradation, but what is now happening is at a global scale. With each passing day, I'm ever more thankful that I chose not to have children.
23
So bad governance is a function of climate change? A average 1.8° C increase in temperature since 1948, with half of that attributed to humans, has caused the current political crisis? Now I know why climate change alarmists have lost so much credibility.
6
Climate change is already destroying the ocean's fisheries by changing currents and water composition. When we have no more fish to eat, mass migration will explode. With no more trees to log, no more produce, no more peace or stability, what then?
25
@Allison Wow, so climate change is actually modifying water composition? So it's no longer H2O? Perhaps over fishing by China and other countries have more to do with destroying fisheries?
4
@Jon Galt It's changing temperature and salinity. Many marine organisms, and the whole food chain that depends on them, are being affected. Allison is perfectly correct.
4
@SqueakyRat
Yes! Allison is on to something important. Solubility of oxygen in water is inversely related to Temperature. Increase temperature and oxygen levels important for marine life decrease. Additionally Ocean pH is effected by carbon concentration. In this case ocean acidity is directly proportional to the levels of carbon absorbed in the ocean. Increase carbon concentrations in ocean water and you increase acidity. Ocean acidification and lower oxygen concentration will adversely impact fishery populations. Both effects are inevitable as the climate changes due to increased levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere.
7
Great information and this is only the beginning of many people migrating from many countries and even within the US when droughts, floods, fires, hurricanes and tornadoes displace people.
How will we feed the US when the farm land in the Midwest is gone due to poor conservation of soil, chemicals and climate change? Time is of the essence to deal with climate change.
43
"Gradually rising temperatures, more extreme weather events and increasingly unpredictable patterns — like rain not falling when it should, or pouring when it shouldn’t — have disrupted growing cycles and promoted the relentless spread of pests."
This is not true for Honduras alone, it is true for the midwest US and so many other growing regions around the world. If farmers can't predict whether to plant crops that grow in cold and wet conditions, or those which are heat and drought resistant because they don't know what weather they're going to get season to season, what are we going to eat?
If you're still denying climate change, consider buying a home in coastal Miami or Louisiana. If-- like 0% of scientists--you're right, you'll have gotten a great deal!
If you're wrong, you'll be underwater and the rest of us can finally take on this challenge without your vote dragging us backward.
Win, Win!
106
If those farmers really want to relocate to better climates they should head south into South America. Argentina and Chile are great possibilities and the people there speak the same language.
36
@Richard Wincheste
The Darien Gap is a very real obstacle preventing those traveling south by land from entering Columbia from Panama. It is 66 miles of untamed wilderness. Travelers by land seeking refuge from climate change will travel thousands of miles north to avoid almost certain death in the 66 mile Darien Gap. I know very few people who could survive a journey through the Gap and I would not wish anyone to attempt to cross it traveling North or South.
5
@Richard Winchester
1340 miles by road from Corinto, Honduras to Brownsville, Texas
Triple the distance – and no road! – from Honduras to Argentina or Chile
Go figure....
You would think that with a global emergency declared by them, twelve years or the planet is bust, you would have all these amazing climate scientists who can see so well in the future be everywhere in town halls.
Answering questions like what makes them so sure that humans cause and control the climate, and what are the expected concrete results of given policies. And how and based on what they reached those conclusions.
Mobilizing the whole economy of the world on a war like footing is a huge thing.
If we were to be hit by an asteroid, astronomers would be around answering questions everywhere. That's what scientists do in an emergency.
Instead, it's crickets.
Decades since last time climatologists took questions from the public.
If ever.
5
@novoad
Climate scientists are academics. They don't lobby in town halls. They do research and publish their findings. If you want that information to influence the decisions in town hall, you need to vote for people who can understand the science and act on it.
137
@Badger That would exclude almost everyone in congress especially AOC. It might include me and if so adaptation is my solution, not say a carbon tax or a Green new deal.
2
@vulcanalex so we need an Adaptation Tax? Although I believe adaptation alone will cost many lives and and much more in treasure.
1
This is an important article. Also worth mentioning: beginning in 2014 the US supported fund a program, the Climate, Nature, and Communities of Guatemala initiative, that was making good progress in finding ways to keep Central American land productive and keep farmers on their land in the face of a changing climate.
Instead of expanding the program to cover more communities throughout Central America, in July 2017 the Trump administration cut all funding to the initiative, which has since withered away.
When the article says that farmers are leaving their land, remember: it doesn't have to be so. Climate change is a huge problem, but one that we can address if we take concerted action.
18
The American citizen is the world biggest polluter. The citizen most responsible for global warming.
Losing farms in Central America? It is happening here in Acton, California. I can point you a farm, while not abandoned, reduced peach production because of the six year drought and a forest fire it became uneconomical to continue farming. While the farm is still in existence and peach production continues and because we've had a good year of rain the farm may survive under new ownership.
11
The military and other experts have been telling us for a decade that climate change would cause food insecurity and mass migration. Suddenly, after years of denial, climate change is here. The deniers do not deny climate change is happening anymore or that humans are a factor. The new false equivalency is in solutions.
The wall is an outgrowth of denial. We play a role in creating the problem, but if we can lock out the suffering masses we will be OK. The denial continues, but it just has another form.
Build the wall, but if you do so, also base it on the reality of carbon reduction and infrastructure planning.
8
And so it begins.
Slowly at first, soon the be a deluge of humanity just trying to survive in the face of an extinction level climate crisis.
Much of their horror is due to greedy fossil fuel companies and a clueless administration refusing to push conversion to renewables.
Yep, the solution is cut the aid, build a wall, and deport 'em all.
64
@Paul You thinking this is an extinction level event tells me that you live in a fantasy. Sure nature is trying to kill of the excess of humans, trying to stop it is foolish.
1
@vulcanalex - read the book, "The Sixth Extinction" and get back to us.
https://www.google.com/search?q=sixth+extinction&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1
7
@Vulcanalex
Fantasy, I don't think so...
Tell the fine folks in the Dominican Republic in the wake of Irma, and the people in East Africa suffering a severe drought, and the flooding in Bangladesh leaving at least 1000 dead, maybe Hurricane Harvey victims in Louisiana or the heat wave in Pakistan.
yeah, we can stop it or at least make a valiant attempt.
All fossil fuel is just that: fossils that should be left in the ground.
9
When earth is dead, and aliens come here to figure out what went wrong, the simple answer will be "capitalism run amok."
89
The aliens will contact us before we're dead outright, watch our Earth-neglect in disgust, and finish the job.
If they're as advanced as I expect them to be, then at least their planet-busting beam will make it quick.
@JeffPutterman, the aliens can already see that now just by looking at Trump and where he sits.
1
Aliens may diagnose "humanity" as just another form of cancer, destroying its host thus inevitably itself.
2
Climate change may be happening; but there's no definitive proof that it's man made. On a side note, I think that despite the darkness in here, I can see a polyp over there in my descending colon...
4
@Teduardo we'll leave you to stare at your descending colon, but there's an awful lot of definitive proof that the current warming of the planet and lowering of lake and ocean pH (acidification) is NOT caused by:
- the sun
- orbital or rotational cycles of Earth
- change in cosmic rays
- internal heat of the planet
And, of course, the effect of CO2 and methane to trap heat in the air was quantified in the lab by Tyndall in the 1860s. The production records of fossil fuel companies match up with the measured increase in CO2 in the air, increased plant growth and change in ocean chemistry - they match, so the CO2 is our release of fossil sources.
Finally, outdoor experiments have documented the increased warming due to the matching increases in CO2 and methane.
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2015/02/25/co2-greenhouse-effect-increase/
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2018/04/02/methane-greenhouse-effect/
So yeah, it's us and there's no evidence to refute that.
2
@Teduardo
How many decades were we told there was no definitive proof smoking causes cancer so that tobacco companies could continue to profit at the expense of human life? There is, in fact, definitive proof that average temperatures across the globe are increasing, that levels of CO2 are rapidly rising, and that human activity is by far the major cause of increasing CO2 levels. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/7-answers-to-climate-contrarian-nonsense/
3
Where do these Central American farmers think they can find land in America to farm? And how do they figure weather is more predictable, or that climate change is less impactful in America?
And btw, weather isn’t “increasingly unpredictable”; the forecasting of weather is increasingly inaccurate.
5
@JBC - you are incorrect about the accuracy of forecasting. It's getting better, not worse.
Here's part of what the American Meteoroligical Society documents. A link is at the end.
"Short-range forecasts
For lead times of approximately twelve hours to two days, short-range forecasts are typically issued for meteorological phenomena, such as tropical storms, hurricanes, and frontal systems and their accompanying sensible weather elements (e.g., temperature, wind, and precipitation). Many of these forecasts are significantly improving: two-day National Hurricane Center hurricane track forecasts issued in 2012 had an average error of 79 miles as compared to 140 miles in 2002 and 192 miles in 1992. Likewise, two-day NOAA Weather Prediction Center forecasts of 24-hour accumulated precipitation issued in 2012 were as accurate as one-day forecasts in 2006.
Medium-range forecasts
[...]Over the past three decades, the skillful range of medium-range forecasts has been extended by roughly one day per decade. Specifically, five- and six-day surface temperature forecasts issued by the National Weather Service had the same level of accuracy in 2012 as did three- and four- day surface temperature forecasts, respectively, in 1992. "
https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/about-ams/ams-statements/statements-of-the-ams-in-force/weather-analysis-and-forecasting/
5
@b fagan
With all due respect to your desire to quote organizational boilerplate, in truth, if you're at the mercy of weather for your livelihood as many of us are, weather forecasters cannot - and do not - accurately predict local weather 90 minutes to half an hour out, much less days or weeks. The Ametsoc can munch on data all it wants, but it's not a healthy diet.
Not that that was the point of my original post.
@JBC - you provide anecdote and I replied with what they can measure in the improvement of results. The improvement in skill is one reason we're seeing an increase in use of wind power, since next-day prediction of wind patterns has improved enough to bid power sales with.
And yeah, sure, the patterns aren't changing, again by just your anecdote. Do you happen to grow fruit? How was 2017 for you? It was lousy for SC and GA.
"90 percent of South Carolina’s peach crop destroyed
Following the record warm February, South Carolina experienced two more weeks of nice temperatures in March which meant the peach trees were at 100 percent bloom when the freeze hit on March 15.
“With a record warm February our bloom came out very early and very quick,” Carr said. “In the 22 years I’ve been doing this, we’ve never had any variety in full bloom in February. This year, we had 26 of our varieties that were in full bloom in February. That’s half of our varieties and the rest of the varieties were quite advanced as well.”
Carr said one of the hardest blows of the freeze is the impact it will have on Titan’s migrant H-2A workers who will now be out of work. “With our vegetable crop, we’ll go from our normal 600 employees to 200 employees. That’s quite a reduction,” Carr said."
https://www.farmprogress.com/orchard-crops/90-percent-south-carolina-s-peach-crop-destroyed
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So Trump is cutting off the aid that helps keep potential immigrants from attempting to flee to the U.S.
The man's a Machiavellian political genius. Cut off aid, do everything within your power to increase global warming thus making Central Americans more desperate and thus accelerating the numbers fleeing to our border thus stoking his base's fear and loathing and then blame it all on the lack of a wall and Democrats.
Maybe he's got some help in developing strategy. This could be helpful to the right wing well into the middle of the century.
For the rich there will be cool enough places to live and plenty of food in the foreseeable future and the right wing of our plutocracy seem devoid of conscience. Seems almost like all of this could have come out of a Koch think tank.
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@alan haigh My money is on Stephen Miller.
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No surprise. A Pentagon study in the past 5-10 years said that drought, crop failure, floods, etc would cause tens of millions of people to cross borders to escape the impact of climate change. This was a report from the Pentagon.
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@Bascom Hill Very correct and if we just focus on keeping them out of our country by whatever means necessary they won't be that much of a problem. The pentagon was assuming we would be involved in the various wars that might result, minding our own business will reduce the impact.
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@vulcanalex - so it's "let them eat cake", eh? The USA is a major CO2 polluter denying all responsibility for the suffering our recklessly self-indulgent lifestyle inflicts on poorer people and other species of the planet. The arc of history leans towards justice. Climate refugees are our karma.
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This is a very important story to be told. As the effects of climate change, mass migration is likely to increase at an accelerating rate. And yet, at the worst possible time, nationalistic tendencies of countries like the US are also on the rise. Our neighbors are facing the life-threatening problems that have resulted largely from humanity's unquenchable thirst for more and more energy. And, this is coupled with the current administration's penchant for deregulation of the very things that are the greatest contributors to this problem. If we don't change our ways with a well thought out strategy, changes will happen anyway, and we'll all be paying the price.
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This is why some kind of global carbon tax is necessary. If a power plant burns coal and dumps CO2 into the environment, the power producer makes money but the damage caused by the their emissions is paid for by someone else. The producer incurs no financial penalty for the losses incurred by other parties.
The loss of crops in Honduras is exacting a terrible toll on the population which is now arriving at our southern border. Do the CO2 emitters have to pay for any of this? No. Maybe they should.
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@Bruce Rozenblit Sure a global carbon tax, who in say the undeveloped world or China would pay that? Who would determine you emissions? Just more fantasy.
Bruce, you and I and everyone else are fossil fuel burning CO2 emitters. We need a national carbon fee and dividend program that rewards non- carbon energy sources. See Citizens Climate Lobby.
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Sounds like propaganda, and climate change isn’t effecting the US?
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So much of US private sector FDI should have gone to countries to our South rather than China over the last, say, 30 years.
There's a reason we no longer read about Chinese from Fujian or other provinces trying to get here in ship containers; the Chinese economy is diversified and strong enough for people to stay at home!
We abandoned struggling democracies to our South in favor of strengthening an autocracy on the other side of the world! We've wasted so much time!
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@trblmkr - Wise beyond your national leaders of past 50-70 years at least…
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Climate change is already increasing the number of refugees dramatically but the numbers will go exponential before long as people flee from hot climates, drought, lack of water from glaciers, mosquito born diseases, coastal flooding, hurricanes, fires, etc.
Our Lobbyocracy seems unable to cope with long-term challenges, especially with the denial of the current administration.
Read "The Uninhabitable Earth" by David Wallace-Wells, etc.
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What is it about the fact that over half the US citizens do not want South America to relocate to the USA that is difficult to agree with? Its definitely a problem that we need to help solve however " hey everybody just move to the USA" is a very poor suggestion. This is stark evidence of why the wall needs to be built, built well and speedily.
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Could you point me towards who’s all happy with the idea of everybody moving here? Please be specific, and do try to quote accurately.
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@Dixon Duval BTW, Honduras is in CENTRAL, not SOUTH AMERICA. The best wall would be cutting carbon emissions.
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@Dixon Duval - the point of the article is that we need to help these farmers where they are, and that cutting off aid is counter-productive.
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I wish that more people could read this article - it should be "above the fold". This is startling news to me, and explains more about the mass migration. We Americans can, and should, help these farmers. And the truth is - we're next. Climate change will affect Americans in ways we are not prepared for, and, under Trump's policies, we are exacerbating. Shame on us. Shame on climate change deniers.
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@Chris Wildman - “And the truth is - we're next.“. We will be the next ones migrating northward, to Canada, if we don’t get our act together and elect people to Congress and elect a president who believe in climate change.
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@Chris Wildman Add to climate change, crime/gangs, poverty and corrupt government, and the picture that emerges is that there will be even more refugees heading north. We need sober and realistic regional solutions that treat people with dignity and humanely. The callous disregard of treating other humans humanely and with dignity, as exemplified by recent headlines, is something Americans will view with shame in the future.
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@Chris Wildman
No, we should not be helping the farmers. Not our problem beyond making sure they do not illegally cross into the country.
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One of the most under reported stories in the world
In 15-20 years the climate refugees coming north from Central America will make the current border crisis look like a blip
Will they qualify for asylum? Are they refugees?
Whatever we categorise them as, there will be many millions of them and if we do not plan for this right now there will be chaos this country hasn't seen since the Civil War
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In reply to Luciano New York City
You write “In 15-20 years the climate refugees coming north from Central America will make the current border crisis look like a blip”.
This is why President Trump wants to build the wall.
@John Murray
No wall can protect from starving human beings.
Address the problem at it's source: massively fund green energy and technologies to extract carbon from the air.
Massively fund agricultural assistance to vulnerable countries to reduce refugee flow.
Reverse tax cuts to provide funding.
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I understand people's opposition to a wall on the border
But not only do I think it's appropriate; I think it's absolutely essential.
Imagine the year 2032. Climate change is wreaking havoc across the globe and one place it is hitting very hard is Central America. Tens of millions - if not hundreds of millions of people - could head north to escape the climate crisis.
The only way to adequately handle a mass climate refugee problem of that magnitude is to have a physical barrier so we can properly and orderly manage the process. Without a physical border we simply will be unable to manage the flow of people
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@Luciano - Alternatively we could help these farmers now where they are (by not cutting aid) while taking sensible steps to address climate change.
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@Luciano Or to eliminate the threat before it gets here, like we might do in any invasion.
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Of course, if there is a way to make things worse, we can count on Trump.
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I really feel for these farmers. But, does "migrating north" necessarily have to mean "to the US"? Some could go to Mexico as well, right?
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They could go to Argentina
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@Cazanueva
NAFTA made corn uneconomic for Mexican smallholders years ago. The economy of rural Mexico has been replaced by North American Big Ag. What are the Central American refugee farmers supposed to do there?
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While rising sea level will take decades to inundate coastal cities, climate induced mass migration is here, and coming soon, food insecurity from collapse of marginal farms in developing nations will disrupt the global economy and migration patterns.
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@Bruce Shigeura
Small farms have been “collapsing” for 590 years. People have been migrating to escape marginal farms for thousands.
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In reply to Bruce Shigeura Berkeley CA
Build the Wall!
Thank you for covering this angle; more on the history of the US domination of and recent assault on Central America would be helpful.
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Exactly why we need a wall.
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@J Bronfman: Just another expenditure we don't need... they'll just find a way around it or under it. We need to look at longer range and more feasible plans, like stopping the things that exacerbate climate change...for instance stop burning coal, overuse of fossil fuels, etc.
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@J Bronfman Do you really think a silly wall will stop anyone from migrating north in search of food and safety? If Republicans, who seem obsessed with stopping northern migration, really want to address this issue then they need to address the root cause. Climate change and the war on drugs that have turned many of these countries into corrupt narco-states. You won't stop them from coming by building a wall. They will come. And after they have arrived at the wall, they will then figure a way to get around the barrier. When ones survival is at stake, and those of their children, people will do anything. Building a stupid wall is a futile joke that may make you feel better but it won't stop the migration. BTW, if you think this is bad you have no idea what await us, and the world, in the near future. Borders as we know them will be a quaint memory of bygone days.
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@J Bronfman Exactly why need a coordinated effort to reverse global warming.
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