Subject: Re: It's happening
My impression is that immigration is the driving force for increased populism worldwide. This is only going to get worse as global warming continues to disrupt the more southern and more coastal countries.

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In the short term, I think the prime driver is war, primarily that in Ukraine. I think people forget how many Ukrainians fled their country and are taking refuge in Poland, Germany and other European nations to a lesser extent. In the bigger picture, these countries have bent over backwards to try to help these refugees. Imagine the strains in your local community if thirty thousaand extra people showed up OVERNIGHT needing apartment space and spaces in schools for their children. Yet countries like Poland and Germany not only opened their borders for these people but their homes as well. Per Wikipedia, over six million Ukrainians have been scattered across Europe alone. But the war has extended twenty eight months. Even for countries that went into this with good intentions and eyes wide open to the economic costs, that's going to produce longer term tensions.

In the longer term, I think you are correct. Climate changes are going to drive migration shifts that will be less predictable than governments might expect. If you suspect rising sea levels will gradually erode beach territory by 50 feet per year on average, that doesn't mean a commmunity can lay out a plan that states every year, some magic line moves inward 50 feet and people beyond the line have to move out in a nice, orderly fashion. A place inundated by rising sea levels may first get wiped out by a hurricane over the course of two days, not five years, creating a spike in demand for people to relocated somewhere else. And the kicker behind climate change is that most of the changes REDUCE the quantity of livable land. The changes aren't merely changing WHERE the liveable land is in some sort of overall zero-sum redistribution. Territory will go under water or become so hot for such extended periods no one will want to live there.

If there's one thing history in general (but especially American history) should teach us is that countries tend to do far better with less strife haggling over the distribution of a GROWING economic pie (especially if much of the growth can be stolen). When the economic pie is SHRINKING...

...Look out.


WTH