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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Other than many of the equatorial areas of the planet becoming too hot for agriculture and life, and most of the river deltas being flooded, what's the problem?

The huge increase in immigrants to the US from central America is driven by climate change. Agriculture there can't feed the people there any more.[1]

[1] https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/06/1120312

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I call bullshit on this. It has become de jure to claim that just about any migration from the developing world to the north is due to climate change for all sorts of convoluted reasons, but the patterns of migration from many developing countries have far too many variables for anyone to assert that.

Among these variables are also trends in terrible government, horrible land policies and infrastructure problems that make certain industries in which millions work unsustainable. All of these are human problems of politics instead of literal climate and all of them could even benefit from more development, instead of hand waving about climate change to fit a fashionable narrative.

Your own link references several very human, very global political trends that have little or nothing to do with climate change as being responsible for central american migration. It doesn't reference any literal notable climate changes that somehow made agriculture in central america worse.

I'm not saying that climate change has nothing to do with migration in the world, but to call it a main cause is tenuous in the extreme and dishonestly symptomatic of flogging this specific thing in all contexts to the point of just making absurd arguments..

See these graphs from Pew Research.[1]

"Encounters (Border Patrol/ICE) soared in fiscal 2021 for some countries that have not historically been common sources of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border. The number of encounters involving people from Ecuador, for example, increased more than eightfold, from 11,861 in fiscal 2020 to 95,692 in fiscal 2021. There were also stark increases in encounters involving people from Brazil (from 6,946 to 56,735), Nicaragua (from 2,123 to 49,841), Venezuela (from 1,227 to 47,752), Haiti (from 4,395 to 45,532) and Cuba (from 9,822 to 38,139)."

Some of that is political, but those are all different countries. All are near the equator.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/09/whats-happe...

The peak fro Cuban migrants was 120,000 in 1980, 38k is paltry by comparison but is recently driven by the absolute breakdown in services in Cuba. Agricultural output in Cuba has been trending down since the collapse of the USSR but was briefly buoyed by free oil from Venezuela. Venezuela is a failed state, and obviously not because of climate. The decimation of agriculture there had more to do with government intervention and expropriations.

Nicaragua is in the midst of a decade of political turmoil and Ortega is actively deporting dissidents. People are fleeing persecution in droves, not a climate disaster.

Haiti is literally without a functioning government, which is why people are leaving.

Brazil is multi-factorial.

I don't know anything about Ecuador.

I thought the equatorial areas were some of the least affected by climate change (at least in terms of temperature)? If it were the primary driver of migration from central America you'd expect to see it in other parts of the world at similar latitudes surely, e.g. Indonesia or equatorial Africa (*). I certainly agree climate change and rising sea levels will be responsible for mass migration (as it has been many times in human history), but it's not clear it's such a key factor currently. Interestingly I just read that Singapore is one near-equatorial location where temperatures have risen more than expected (and more than the global average), seemingly largely due the UHI effect. Needless to say, Singapore is not a common source of refugees.

* South sudan is definitely a case where severe weather events including flooding has driven up emigration, but most of the refugees have ended up in Uganda which is on the equator!

Thank you for that insight. I wish to mention that I live in the North and have been told by the "power" that I have to reduce my carbon footprint by 50% -- actually more like 75% to accommodate immigration (between now and 2100). If I am no longer allowed to burn stuff for heat, I will have to come south. I will be a climate migrant. I assume that Florida is willing to accept me? Perhaps somewhere in South America? Or Mexico?

The weather here just wants to kill people a lot of the time...

It had nothing to do with Biden saying they were welcome to come?

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