AYLMER, QUEBEC | As Europe finds itself struggling with a continual flood of migrants, the EU has released a study that predicts an entirely new form of refugee: climate migrants. These are people forced from their homes due to climate change. Where we might once have imagined climate refugees as the bleached Canadians on the southern beaches, that image has been pulled inside out.

Climate change, however it is caused or defined, is a worldwide phenomenon, and, as the seas rise and desertification spreads, climate migration will spread worldwide. Canada can't opt out, despite our insulation of the USA and our oceans.

Even our most perfect insulation, our long harsh winters, will not be insulation enough as winters moderate (or fluctuate in severity) and as our cities become large and protective of those unaccustomed to Canadian winters.

People coming to us because their climate is worse than ours? That's hard to believe, especially after the winter of zero-seven zero-eight

As seas rise and storms lash across the Caribbean and America Latina, more people will be forced from their homes; the low, coastal areas will become swamps. Thousands will push inland, or northward, putting more pressure on the people already living there, already in crowded conditions.

The population will slowly expand, pressing against our borders, and the pressures of people in misery will force us to get more involved, either in bringing people to our provinces or in funding efforts to alleviate their suffering and to provide rudiments of health, education, and opportunities to earn a living.

Help them to stay where they are, in other words.

Mexico will most likely be the one to come apart in this pressure cooker. Unable to stop people from moving northward, she will be caught between the rock of climate disaster and the hard place of American border-intransigence.

This isn't just Mexico's problem. We're linked through thousands of bonds, contracts, and agreements to Mexico, the most obvious being NAFTA and the secretive SPP agreements. Mexico's problems will be our problems because there will not be a lot of legal difference between our nations. There are smart ways to deal with this, besides the usual panic.

So that's immigration.

If we look at issue number two, desertification, the insulating border of the USA is reduced to our border, because the US is itself suffering desertification, or loss of its major aquifers. The big question will be water, not populations.

The Americans want pipelines and canals bringing Canadian water to their Southwest, California. And the Pacific Northwest. Water will eclipse oil. Imagine.

Here, too, there are smart ways to deal with this, built on long-range revenue objectives. Treating water as corporate property and shipping it out won't work.

---

Copyright © 2008 Fred Ryan/Log Cabin Chronicles/04.08