I’ve been trying to ignore this because it strikes me as ludicrous, but readers should know that leftists are shamelessly linking their pet projects. The UN reported in June that climate change (note they no longer say global warming because there is no warming) fuels conflicts which in turn produce refugees.
Climate change is fuelling conflicts around the world and helping to drive the number of people forced out of their homes to new highs, the head of the UN’s refugee agency said yesterday. After a few years of improvement, thanks mainly to large-scale resettlement in Afghanistan, the numbers of civilians uprooted by conflict is again rising. During 2007 the total jumped to 37.4 million, an increase of more than 3 million, according to statistics published today.
The figures, described as “unprecedented” by the UN, do not include people escaping natural disasters or poverty – only those fleeing conflict and persecution. But Antonio Guterres, the UN high commissioner for refugees, said that climate change could also uproot people by provoking conflicts over increasingly scarce resources, such as water.
In an interview with the Guardian, Guterres said: “Climate change is today one of the main drivers of forced displacement, both directly through impact on environment – not allowing people to live any more in the areas where they were traditionally living – and as a trigger of extreme poverty and conflict.”
I wonder if I will live to see the day when news from the UN says that Islamic terrorism is one of the main drivers of forced displacement. I thought maybe UN High Commissioner for Refugees Guterres was getting close here until the last line.
“What we are witnessing is a trend in the world where more and more people feel threatened by conflict, threatened by their own government, threatened by other political, religious ethnic or social groups, threatened by nature and nature’s retaliation against human aggression – climate change is the example of that.
Threatened by nature’s retaliation against human aggression! What! Nature is retaliating? Nature is getting even? Nature doesn’t like people fighting with each other? Nature is angry about human aggression and is fighting back by changing its climate? Ahhh!
Maybe I just haven’t had enough coffee this morning.