'Climate Refugees' Are For Real

The United Nations estimates that there are currently about 25-50 million “climate refugees,” people who have had to move from their homeland because of lack of natural resources including water. The number is greater than both political and religious refugees in the world.

As pundits debate Climategate and Al Gore puts his foot in his mouth, misquoting Arctic melt statistics by a prominent climatologist, it’s easy to forget that “climate refugees” aren’t statistics in a computer. Most are in poor, environmentally vulnerable areas, and the number is expected to grow in the next decade by tens of millions.

Climate Refugees

Whatever or whoever is causing climate change — humans, the sun, overpopulation, God or Wall Street — just to name a partial list of possible players in this burgeoning drama — very, very few intelligent people dispute the reality of “climate refugees”.

Michael Nash is screening his new documentary film, “Climate Refugees” in Copenhagena. The project took him and his film crew around the world for nearly three years, documenting the plight of the people who have been forced to migrate, and giving a haunting picture of the future. Anne

Read the in-depth article Filmmaker Takes on Plight of ‘Climate Refugees’ at Copenhagen ABC News

Update on Thu, December 17, 2009 by Anne

The German newspaper SPIEGEL online has an excellent article on climate refugees. Bottom line, it’s a subject nobody wants to discuss, and the reasons are probably obvious: What about Climate Refugees? Efforts to Help the Displaced Bog Down in Copenhagen.

Rabeya Khatoon, right, and Moriom Bibi, lost their homes to cyclone Aila and are now working at a Dhaka brick factory. Photo AP