US
Suffers World's First
Climate Change Exodus
By Jitendra Joshi
18 August, 2006
Agence France Presse
The first mass exodus of people
fleeing the disastrous effects of climate change is not happening in
low-lying Pacific islands but in the world's richest country, a US study
said.
"The first massive movement
of climate refugees has been that of people away from the Gulf Coast
of the United States," said the Earth Policy Institute, which has
warned for years that climate change demands action now.
Institute president Lester Brown said that about a quarter of a million
people who fled the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina a year ago
must now be classed as "refugees".
"Interestingly, the
country to suffer the most damage from a hurricane is also primarily
responsible for global warming," he said.
The United States is the
world's largest consumer of energy, but has refused to sign up to the
Kyoto pact aimed at reducing emissions of gases that scientists say
are to blame for heating up the Earth.
Many environmentalists had
expected the first big population shift to come somewhere like the Tuamotu
islands in French Polynesia, the world's largest chain of atolls which
rise barely metres (feet) from the Pacific.
Rising sea levels are part
of the problem afflicting low-lying places but, experts argue, so are
tropical storms that are mounting in ferocity because of warmer ocean
temperatures.
Brown said many thousands
of people who evacuated last year as Katrina slammed into New Orleans
and other populated areas on the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts had
no intention of returning.
"We estimate that at
least 250,000 of them have established homes elsewhere and will not
return," he said.
"They no longer want
to face the personal trauma and financial risks associated with rising
seas and more destructive storms. These evacuees are now climate refugees."
Many businesses have also
deserted the coastal towns left ravaged by Katrina as insurance and
other costs soar, the study said.
"As rising seas and
more powerful hurricanes translate into higher insurance costs in these
coastal communities, people are retreating inland," Brown said.
"And just as companies
migrate to regions with lower wages, they also migrate to regions with
lower insurance costs."
The study also warned: "The
experience with more destructive storms in recent years is only the
beginning."
The institute said that since
1970, the Earth's average temperature has risen by one degree Fahrenheit,
but by 2100 it could rise by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (six degrees
Celsius).
Rising temperatures could
melt glaciers and polar ice caps, raising sea levels and displacing
coastal residents worldwide.
"The flow of climate
refugees to date numbers in the thousands, but if we do not quickly
reduce CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions, it could one day number in the
millions," Brown said.
The institute's study classed
"climate refugees" as part of a larger group of people who
have been forced from their homes by man-made environmental change such
as overgrazing.
"Overgrazing destroys
the vegetation which leads then to local sandstorms ... we are looking
at growing flows of environmental refugees in Africa, for example in
Nigeria, Senegal, Mauritania or Kenya," Brown told reporters.
Millions of people in northern
and western China have abandoned their villages as the land turns semi-arid
because of overgrazing, the study said.
China is also the second
biggest greenhouse-gas polluter after the United States thanks to the
voracious rise in coal, gas and oil consumption to power its economic
growth.
The booming port city of
Shanghai could be at risk of flooding from more ferocious typhoons linked
to global warming as it is only a metre (three feet) above sea level,
Brown said.
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