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Arkansas Has a Growing Population of "Climate Change Refugees"
HughPickens.com writes: Located between Hawaii and Australia, the Marshall Islands are made up of 29 atolls and five islands with a population of about 70,000, all of whom live about six feet above sea level. Now Story Hinkley writes in the Christian Science Monitor that another 10,000 Marshallese have moved to Springdale, Arkansas because of climate change. Because this Pacific island nation is so small, the Marshallese population in Arkansas attribute their Springdale settlement to one man, John Moody, who moved to the US in 1979 after the first wave of flooding. Moody's family eventually moved to Springdale to live with him and work for Tyson and other poultry companies based in Arkansas, eventually causing a steady flow of extended friends and family migrating to Springdale. "Probably in 10 to 20 years from now, we're all going to move," says Roselinta Keimbar adding that she likes Arkansas because it is far away from the ocean, meaning it is safe.
For more than three decades, Marshallese have moved in the thousands to the landlocked Ozark Mountains for better education, jobs and health care, thanks to an agreement that lets them live and work in the US.. This historical connection makes it an obvious destination for those facing a new threat: global warming. Marshallese Foreign Minister Tony de Brum says even a small rise in global temperatures would spell the demise of his country. While many world leaders in Paris want to curb emissions enough to cap Earth's warming at 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), de Brum is pushing for a target that's 25 percent lower. "The thought of evacuation is repulsive to us," says de Brum. "We think that the more reasonable thing to do is to seek to end this madness, this climate madness, where people think that smaller, vulnerable countries are expendable and therefore they can continue to do business as usual." Meanwhile residents jokingly call their new home "Springdale Atoll," and there's even a Marshallese consulate in Springdale, the only one on the mainland US. "Its not our fault that the tide is getting higher," says Carlon Zedkaia,. "Just somebody else in this world that wants to get rich."
For more than three decades, Marshallese have moved in the thousands to the landlocked Ozark Mountains for better education, jobs and health care, thanks to an agreement that lets them live and work in the US.. This historical connection makes it an obvious destination for those facing a new threat: global warming. Marshallese Foreign Minister Tony de Brum says even a small rise in global temperatures would spell the demise of his country. While many world leaders in Paris want to curb emissions enough to cap Earth's warming at 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), de Brum is pushing for a target that's 25 percent lower. "The thought of evacuation is repulsive to us," says de Brum. "We think that the more reasonable thing to do is to seek to end this madness, this climate madness, where people think that smaller, vulnerable countries are expendable and therefore they can continue to do business as usual." Meanwhile residents jokingly call their new home "Springdale Atoll," and there's even a Marshallese consulate in Springdale, the only one on the mainland US. "Its not our fault that the tide is getting higher," says Carlon Zedkaia,. "Just somebody else in this world that wants to get rich."
It's AGW week. "Climate change refugees" for something that hasn't happened yet is more PC than saying they moved to the USA because it's the "land of opportunity", providing jobs and education, with "chain immigration" policies making it easy to import thousands relatives once the first legal immigrant arrives.
Except, the claim is they started fleeing in 1979. I was a senior in college then taking a physics of the weather class. We were in the middle of global cooling, and that was most of what the class talked about. There's no way there was a problem then. That was before Raygun decided to really crank-up the temperature of the Earth in order to hurt the poor and minorities.
Per capita GDP in the Marshall Islands is $2900, compared to Arkansas's $31000. Arkansas, while near the bottom among US states, is better off even compared to EU members like the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Portugal, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, and Croatia.
No matter how much "schools and infrastructure" we put in place, a pacific atoll simply doesn't have much to support a thriving economy: it is poorly located for physical or data traffic, has few natural resources, and has always been at high risk of natural disasters. The reason much of Micronesia and Polynesia were settled so late in human migration (many places just a few thousand years ago) is because these islands really are not good places to live and people only move there if they don't have a choice.
Three reasons were called out in the article:
John Moody and his family moved from the islands to Springdale creating an existing community of Marshalese in the US
There's a Marshalese consulate in Springdale
There's an existing agreement that lets the Marshalese people live and work in the US