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Comment by wayoutthere | Hacker News Reader

Climate change, and how brittle the JIT-optimized global logistics system we built over the last 50 years is. We can and will need to adjust to a more flexible system to deal with the increased disruption from climate change, but that system will be more expensive and less efficient.

Couple this with the fact that we’re going to eventually have food shortages at least locally in the short-to-medium term, which will destabilize the developing world and raise global food prices as more countries have to import from “bread basket” countries like the US and China and consuming even more global logistics capacity than it does today. This long-term famine is already happening in Central America and is driving more and more migrants north every year.

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Can you elaborate on how you feel climate change has recently affected this issue? It seems more likely to me that the recent pandemic is the major issue.

> This long-term famine is already happening in Central America and is driving more and more migrants north every year.

This is certainly a problem but not nearly a major reason that migrants are coming north. They're coming north because they can make their monthly salary from northern triangle countries in a few days in the US. These are economic migrants, regardless of what the news tells you, evidenced by the fact that almost none of them are accepting offers of asylum in Mexico and choosing to continue to the US.

> evidenced by the fact that almost none of them are accepting offers of asylum in Mexico and choosing to continue to the US

How is this evidence? If Mexico isn’t my home either and I already have to start my life over why wouldn’t I keep going to a place with even more opportunity?

I don't blame anyone for pursuing their self interest. I would do the same thing if I was them. But it's dishonest to say their primary motivation isn't economic. If they're fleeing something in their home country, they've successfully escaped it by getting to Mexico. Continuing to the US is an economic decision.

Economic migrants sure, but the chain to crushing poverty starts with climate change. Persistent high heat and violent tropical weather patterns have made areas of Central America near the equator effectively unfarmable. Those farmers pack up and move to the cities, where they live in poverty and at the mercy of organized crime as they are largely uneducated and lack job skills.

The cities are overcrowded and these countries have little industry outside agriculture, which is increasingly difficult and expensive thanks to climate change. So of course they flee north; and Mexico has many of the same problems with collusion between police and organized crime — particularly when targeting migrant populations.

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