A debilitating heatwave swept through Western Europe in late June, with temperatures topping 40 degrees centigrade in much of France and the Iberian Peninsula. In Spain, wildfires triggered by the extreme heat burnt through more than 4,000 hectares of forest. In the US, the iconic Yellowstone National Park was closed after unprecedented rainfall caused massive flooding and rainfall. Meanwhile, at the Stockholm+50 conference, marking five decades since the establishment of the United Nations Environmental Programme, it was business as usual as wealthy countries made paternalistic noises towards their poorer counterparts about finally taking some radical action on the climate.
Listening to discussions within policy circles on migration and refugees, you might imagine that climate change will only affect countries of the Global South, leading to a massive influx of people into Europe and North America from predominantly non-white countries. For example, in 2021, the US government launched a report on the impact of the climate crisis on migration which focused on how countries in the Global South could be destabilized by intensifying conflict, driving more people to migrate. Overall the report was clear: climate change is a threat to the US because it might lead to massive immigration into the country, not emigration from it. There is one line acknowledging that poor communities at home might also be affected by climate change but no mention that the dramatic increase in wildfires and flooding across the country does not discriminate between economic strata. There is also nothing on the stagnation of the US’s own climate policy in light of its fragmented politics, as was evident in June when its Supreme Court decided to constrain the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants.
