Do As You Would Be Done By
I saw this, from the Dees Diversion, linked to at The Sideshow this morning:
Next time there’s a hurricane I must remember not to go to Greenleaf, Idaho. Ordinance 208, passed last week by the Greenleaf City Council, requests that citizens keep guns in their homes, just in case people fleeing a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina should wind up there. “We could get refugees,” said councilman Steven Jett, who dreamed up this piece of civic responsibility.
God forbid. Some of us might seek hotel rooms to rent, food and liquor to buy, and a place to pick up some bath foam and Ibuprofin.
Apparently, Jett’s ordinance got through pretty easily, and “drew only mild criticism from the pastor of the town’s Quaker meeting house.” The law originally required citizens to keep guns in their houses, but the language was toned down to make allowances for people with religious or other moral objections to gun ownership.
The mayor of Greenleaf, which is just outside Boise, owns over two dozen rifles.
It’s not just crackpot survivalist local sheriffs doing this either, it’s whole nations – that post reminded of something I came across in one of the threads at the Grauniad’s Comment Is Free yesterday, from an Australian who said that his country had already decided not to offer asylum or protection from climatic catastrophes to any Pacific island refugees.
I had a little google and it seems that that’s true:
Calls mount for Pacific refugee policy
October 9, 2006 – 8:54AMAustralia is under increasing pressure to formulate a policy to take in environmental refugees following warnings that millions of people in the Asia-Pacific could be left homeless because of climate change.
A CSIRO report released Monday raised concerns that millions of people on low-lying islands and lands in Asia-Pacific nations will be left homeless in the next 40 years due to rising sea levels induced by climate change.
[…]
Environment Minister Ian Campbell said Australia would not turn its back on its neighbours but he refused to commit to taking refugees.
He said the focus on helping Pacific nations cope with climate change should be economic and ensure that Pacific islanders stay in their home countries.
Stay in their home countries, when they’re under a couple of feet of water? That might be a bit difficult when there’s no there there any more. Take the situation the people of Tuvalu are in, for example:
In places like the tiny island nation of Tuvalu the effects of climate change are most apparent. The annual spring tides on Tuvalu have been at record heights in recent years. Crop gardens and drinking wells are being contaminated with salt water. Some villagers are forced to relocate inland in search of a less vulnerable place to live. Environmental refugees need the help of countries like Australia.
In 2001, the Tuvaluan government requested that Australia support the resettling of 50% of its population in recognition that the impacts of climate change would force Tuvaluan people to abandon their homeland. The Australian government refused on the grounds that climate change was not certain. This response is inconsistent with national and international scientific recognition of changing climatic conditions and their likely effects. Despite growing evidence about human displacement due to global warming ? most recently outlined in the Stern Report, written for the UK government ? the Australian government refuses to acknowledge the serious situation we face. In October 2006, the Immigration Minister Senator Amanda Vanstone says her Department has not made any plans to deal with climate refugees, and that this is because “there’s no such thing as a climate [change] refugee” (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200610/s1776389.htm).
[My emphasis]
You can see the thinking both from the US townspeople and the Australians -fuck ’em, let ’em all drown, just as long as we’ve got ours screw everyone else. The trouble is it’s not going to be just a few pesky Pacific islands on the move to be fought off – a lot more people will affected and they won’t be dismissed so easily as the poor Tuvaluans have been by Australia:
Examples of potential impacts of sea level rise can be noted all around the world. In Bangladesh, around half of the country’s population lives in areas less that five meters above sea-level. Similarly, a one metre rise in sea-level would affect 67% of the Netherlands population. The mega cities of London, Shanghai, Hamburg, Bangkok, Jakarta, Bombay, Manila, Buenos Aires and Venice are all built on low-lying coastal areas. The city of Manhattan in New York is another example of an island that is under threat from sea-level rise.
There are 20 million people in Shanghai alone, in Greater Buenos Aires there’s 12.4 million and growing. Mumbai, home to about 18 million people, will over the next two decades see its population grow to about 28.5 million. It’s not just the megacities though, all low-lying coastal areas will be hit, including the home of the US government, Washington DC:
Tide gauges around the Chesapeake Bay indicate that the relative sea level in the Bay is rising at twice the average global rate of 1.8 mm per year.
If Washingtonians want to know what’s in their future, they should take a look at Bangladesh:
Rising Sea Levels Erode Half Of Bangladesh’s Biggest Island: Study
From a size of 6,400 square kilometres (3,968 square miles) in 1965, Bhola island near the mouth of the Bay of Bengal is now only half its original size.
[…]
Dhaka, Bangladesh (AFP) Jun 15, 2005
River currents strengthened by rising sea levels have devoured half of Bangladesh’s biggest island in 40 years, leaving half a million people homeless, researchers said Wednesday.From a size of 6,400 square kilometres (3,968 square miles) in 1965, Bhola island near the mouth of the Bay of Bengal is now only half its original size.
When the Chesapeake Bay and the low-lying parts of the US coast flood there’ll be no escape to higher ground for even the nation’s leaders, not if Idaho’s has anything to do with it. But will they be able to stop them? What are you the likes of Australia and Greenleaf going to do, shoot them all? They can’t murder everyone.
It’ll be impossible too for any destination country to stop these massive numbers of potential refugees from trying to make a getaway when the rising tides come. It’s long past time for a new international compact on climate change refugees: the UNHCR and other agreements were written in light of war and its aftermath, not massive global shifts in population resulting from climate change . If this isn’t tackled before the actual event the results will be horrible.
Read more: Climate change refugees, Global warming, Rising sea level, Australia, US, Greenleaf, Idaho, Pacific islands, Tuvalu.
