'No other option': Climate change driving many to flee Guatemala | Hacker News Reader

'No other option': Climate change driving many to flee Guatemala

aljazeera.com

24 pointshoward9418 comments

Population quadrupled since 1960 [0]. Going back 100 years, population exploded fourteen times over, from 1.2M in 1919 to 17.5M in 2019 [1]. Still growing strong, estimated to add another 9M by 2050. Pretty sure none of that population explosion was caused by "climate change".

[0] https://www.populationof.net/guatemala/ [1] http://populstat.info/Americas/guatemac.htm

I hate to ask, but did you actually read the article or just instinctively recoil at the mention of climate change?

The article itself mentions the issue of droughts and rising temperature affecting the crop yield, which means less work for the able-bodied workers and less food. This in turn exacerbates poverty issues. More extreme weather conditions also has a compounding effect, which means people migrate to regions not as affected by extreme weather shifts.

This is not the first time drought brings down Central American civilizations. Around 1000 years ago, the Mayan civilization collapsed under the weight of unsustainable populations combined with severe droughts [0].

[0] http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160222-severe-droughts-expl...

This is an absurd line of thought and incredibly disengenous to the fact that many first world nation's are heavily contributing to climate change which results in displacing populations.

You're arguing solely from a population problem which is tangential at best. The issue is that even if population growth was controlled climate change is rendering entire regions unfit for sustaining human life. Why is it OK for a Nation to effectively render another unfit for human life, then turn around and tell people looking to escape to go away? Do you actually have anything to say on the issues represented in the article or do you intend on just spreading FUD?

He points out some facts, even provides sources, and your sole counterargument is to call it 'absurd', 'disingenous', etc. Because we can't have anyone doubting the Holy Climate Change.

He's not the one spreading FUD here. You and the rest of the 'zomg world ends in 10 years' gang are.

For reference, his original post was edited from its prior form, where it complained about countries overpopulating despite the 'predictability' of climate change and spreading fear about migrants. That is exactly what I was responding to, and it's a damn shame that HN doesn't have a post history for edits.

True. I hoped to avoid a flame war, alas it's too late. The question is specifically about countries in Central America known to suffer periodic, though fairly rare, catastrophic droughts. The question is: does the rest of the world have an obligation and/or the capability to take in tens of millions of migrants from such countries susceptible to catastrophic droughts, with or without antropogenic climate change, when the drought inevitably hits?

Normally this is my comment. And I contrast that agricultural yields sure as hell never change by a factor of 4... so I looked up Guatemala, and was surprised:

https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=gt&commodity...

It looks like they essentially stopped growing wheat at all in the 90s. (And started growing soya, in similar quantities.) But maybe they don't eat wheat, corn is 40x larger, and growing, doubled since 1960 -- but not keeping up with population. With a sharp drop in 2018, back to 2011's levels:

https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?country=gt&commodity...

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