Reader John Williams sent us a link to an insightful post on the Volokh Conspiracy that explains the motives of the UN on the climate refugee issue that we’ve started to follow again.
We are used to reading such stories as the politicization of science and its corruption by the politics of the UN, funders, and, to be sure, the desire of some scientists to switch professions from research to policy. We hear about it because it is correct.
But there is another — no less unimpressive — way to understand the story. That is from the standpoint of the long term incentives of the United Nations and its many agencies. Seen from the standpoint of climate change and its scientists and environmental activists alone, this story looks to be about hyperbolic claims about the immediate effects of climate change. Seen from the standpoint of the longer history of the UN, it is much more about the long-running movements by the UN to find issues that tend to do two things. One is to increase the institutional UN’s governance responsibilities, authority, legitimacy, and power. The other is to increase the amount of money that runs through UN mechanisms from rich countries to poor countries, with an administrative cut to the UN itself.
He goes on to point out that environmentalists and others who are pleased when the UN takes up their cause are not aware of these motives, and don’t understand that UN officials don’t give a fig about their particular cause. When the current one has run out of steam, they just move on to another one. Now they’re trying to prolong the climate refugee cause by postponing the date of the apocalypse.