7 ms·

climate refugees about to be a thing. it's gonna get ugly

by kubb 5y ago

haunter 5y ago
Not sure why are you downvoted cause this will be a really thing very soon
irrational 5y ago
I keep reading that the Middle East will become uninhabitable this century. All those people will have to go somewhere. Heading North to Europe seems like the most likely outcome.
- sharken 5y ago
  Likely outcome yes, good idea no. Sadly the Middle East culture and religion is incompatible with the one in Europe. So if this scenario should play out, we will see middle east conditions with unrest everywhere. Better to let the migration go to compatible countries such as Turkey.
  - zo1 5y ago
  - 4ggr0 5y ago
    Sorry but that's just straight-up right-wing propaganda. Don't know if you're acting in bad faith or just repeating things you've read or heard somewhere, but statements like these are just disgusting to me as a Caucasian european who grew up with friends who have parents from the middle east. I'm an atheist, some of my friends are muslim, yet we don't struggle to be friends because of that. You are probably talking about very conservative people who like to hang gay people and all of that funny stuff, but just making a blank statement that this is true for all of the middle east is very wrong. EDIT: Was never down-voted so fast on HN, is the majority of HN really so negative towards people from the middle east?
    - colechristensen 5y ago
      When things like reading a headline "UNICEF Chief: Taliban Committed to Let Girls Back to School" or the recent history of progress for women in Saudi Arabia is women being allowed to drive... it's not extremist propaganda to say that importing populations from the middle east will have huge cultural implications for western nations. It is inappropriate to apply the generalization to one person, because there is much diversity among people. When you talk about a population though, it isn't propaganda to say that there are huge cultural problems with views which are fundamentally problematic if you try to import sizable portions into a modern western country. One of the reasons you get strong right-wing reactionaries is people who are trying to be progressive turning a blind eye to the actual cultural issues instead of acknowledging and trying to mitigate and minimize them. There are certainly lovely people from the middle east, I have had the pleasure of knowing a few who were from or had roots in that part of the world. There is a basic difference between (wrongly) saying "this is where you're from and what you look like so you must be like this" and (rightly) "taking in a million refugees from here will have these sorts of problems".
      - 4ggr0 5y ago
        I would counter your comment by saying that it is pretty unjust to judge the whole population by taking the worst examples as a metric. Taliban and the Saudi Arabian government are very conservative and I don't like them either, yes. But I would not take these two as a description for "People from the middle east". I agree a bit with "people who are trying to be progressive turning a blind eye to the actual cultural issues", but I still think that the comment I responded to is wrong, and your explanation does not really change my mind. Of course there are issues. A person who hates other sexualities, doesn't like women being independent and wants to spread their religion no matter what is a tough challenge for progressive cultures, but then I guess Europe should not accept very conservative people from other places either ;D As an example, I don't know why a very conservative, traditionalist and religious person from Texas should be more compatible with Europe than someone from Saudi Arabia(half joking). Add to that, that Europe != Europe. Were I gay, I would not want to live in Hungary or Poland, either.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    > Sadly the Middle East culture and religion is incompatible with the one in Europe. Which Middle East culture and religion? Be specific. Are you talking about Israel? Saudi Arabia? Iran? Kurdistan? If you're going to condemn a whole ethnic/religion group at least pick just one, not a random grab bag of "brown people".
    - blfr 5y ago
      You don't need to be all that specific because while there is a huge diversity of cultures in the Middle East virtually all of them have serious disagreements and incompatibilities with legacy European cultures.
      - screenbreakout 5y ago
        Curious, what you think these are? I am "European" and probably have such disagreements, it doesn't necessarily make me incompatible... diversity is great...I mean look at the advantages it's already brought (even if the f.. politicians enjoy "playing" with it) I'm personally for integration not assimilation ...
  - ben_w 5y ago
    I don’t think the culture differences are going to be as big a deal as you think, partly because religiosity has declined a lot in many western nations since my parents were born (start of WW2), woman’s rights have substantially improved, LGB[0] issues have gone from “we are chemically castrating you” to “there are half a dozen openly gay and lesbian national leaders”, and some of these changes are already in motion in the rest of the world; and partly because the main cultural split in the world right now is between urban and rural within any nation, not between the nations. [0] while medical tech has improved for trans issues, I can’t really say western culture is kinder to that group today as compared to 1950, nor do I know how trans issues are regarded in the Middle East.
    - armitron 5y ago
      Look at what happened to Sweden. Gangs, bombings, no-go areas, zero integration, all in the span of a few years. Look at what's happening in France. In fact, if you look anywhere where large migrations of non-culturally compatible populations have taken place, the result is always the same: mayhem.
      - retrac 5y ago
        My interpretation is that the social problems around refugees is that they are refugees from poor places. Generally poor, young, uneducated and maybe traumatized. Here in Canada the largely upper middle class Middle Eastern immigrants integrate and assimilate fairly well. On the other hand, ethnic groups from East and South Europe where we received many refugees in the 80s and 90s still have a bit of a reputation for organised crime, much as the Italians got tarred 50 years ago. Because yes, a lot of those refugees got involved with it. What else is some young Russian or Serb with no job skills and limited language skills supposed to do in the Canadian job market back then? Bring in lots of poor uneducated people who don't speak the language and no amount of cultural compatibility will defuse the problems created.
        armitron 5y ago
        Education, language, skills are all attributes of "cultural compatibility".
hogrider 5y ago
And yet people still having kids. The worse affected regions still have the highest natality rates.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  > The worse affected regions still have the highest natality rates. The same regions have the lowest per-capita carbon output. Perhaps we should tie reproductive rights to carbon footprint, to increase the proportion of low-pollution individuals. I'm only being half-sarcastic.
  - decremental 5y ago
    They have low carbon footprints because they live in mud huts. I don't think they're going to be great stewards for the future of humanity. Modern civilization, that thing you're enjoying right now, was built by the people you want fewer of for some reason.
  - pengaru 5y ago
    > The same regions have the lowest per-capita carbon output. Largely irrelevant. Every country aspires to increase their quality of life, burgeoning populations still living in the mud are just carbon time bombs. So, relevant in the negative sense of their per-capita output has nowhere to go but up, with a huge multiplier. It helps to view "third-world" as simply arriving in third place at the finish line of modern living; on a long enough timeline, there are no more mud huts. In the film Before the Flood, there's a part focused on India which states they have ~300M people living without electricity. A population roughly the size of the USA. In the same part, representatives from India's government make clear that India has vast coal reserves and no intention of leaving those 300M people without electricity. You're looking at an overnight arrival of the US population from the dark to using lights and refrigerators. It's not like populations with low carbon output have all mastered some kind of low impact living. They're just poor and lagging behind the more wealthy nations, don't mistake it for a lack of intention to join the first-world.
    - 5y ago

climate refugees about to be a thing. it's gonna get ugly

by kubb 5y ago

climate refugees about to be a thing. it's gonna get ugly

haunter 5y ago

Not sure why are you downvoted cause this will be a really thing very soon

irrational 5y ago

I keep reading that the Middle East will become uninhabitable this century. All those people will have to go somewhere. Heading North to Europe seems like the most likely outcome.

sharken 5y ago
Likely outcome yes, good idea no. Sadly the Middle East culture and religion is incompatible with the one in Europe. So if this scenario should play out, we will see middle east conditions with unrest everywhere. Better to let the migration go to compatible countries such as Turkey.
- zo1 5y ago
- 4ggr0 5y ago
  Sorry but that's just straight-up right-wing propaganda. Don't know if you're acting in bad faith or just repeating things you've read or heard somewhere, but statements like these are just disgusting to me as a Caucasian european who grew up with friends who have parents from the middle east. I'm an atheist, some of my friends are muslim, yet we don't struggle to be friends because of that. You are probably talking about very conservative people who like to hang gay people and all of that funny stuff, but just making a blank statement that this is true for all of the middle east is very wrong. EDIT: Was never down-voted so fast on HN, is the majority of HN really so negative towards people from the middle east?
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    When things like reading a headline "UNICEF Chief: Taliban Committed to Let Girls Back to School" or the recent history of progress for women in Saudi Arabia is women being allowed to drive... it's not extremist propaganda to say that importing populations from the middle east will have huge cultural implications for western nations. It is inappropriate to apply the generalization to one person, because there is much diversity among people. When you talk about a population though, it isn't propaganda to say that there are huge cultural problems with views which are fundamentally problematic if you try to import sizable portions into a modern western country. One of the reasons you get strong right-wing reactionaries is people who are trying to be progressive turning a blind eye to the actual cultural issues instead of acknowledging and trying to mitigate and minimize them. There are certainly lovely people from the middle east, I have had the pleasure of knowing a few who were from or had roots in that part of the world. There is a basic difference between (wrongly) saying "this is where you're from and what you look like so you must be like this" and (rightly) "taking in a million refugees from here will have these sorts of problems".
    - 4ggr0 5y ago
      I would counter your comment by saying that it is pretty unjust to judge the whole population by taking the worst examples as a metric. Taliban and the Saudi Arabian government are very conservative and I don't like them either, yes. But I would not take these two as a description for "People from the middle east". I agree a bit with "people who are trying to be progressive turning a blind eye to the actual cultural issues", but I still think that the comment I responded to is wrong, and your explanation does not really change my mind. Of course there are issues. A person who hates other sexualities, doesn't like women being independent and wants to spread their religion no matter what is a tough challenge for progressive cultures, but then I guess Europe should not accept very conservative people from other places either ;D As an example, I don't know why a very conservative, traditionalist and religious person from Texas should be more compatible with Europe than someone from Saudi Arabia(half joking). Add to that, that Europe != Europe. Were I gay, I would not want to live in Hungary or Poland, either.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  > Sadly the Middle East culture and religion is incompatible with the one in Europe. Which Middle East culture and religion? Be specific. Are you talking about Israel? Saudi Arabia? Iran? Kurdistan? If you're going to condemn a whole ethnic/religion group at least pick just one, not a random grab bag of "brown people".
  - blfr 5y ago
    You don't need to be all that specific because while there is a huge diversity of cultures in the Middle East virtually all of them have serious disagreements and incompatibilities with legacy European cultures.
    - screenbreakout 5y ago
      Curious, what you think these are? I am "European" and probably have such disagreements, it doesn't necessarily make me incompatible... diversity is great...I mean look at the advantages it's already brought (even if the f.. politicians enjoy "playing" with it) I'm personally for integration not assimilation ...
- ben_w 5y ago
  I don’t think the culture differences are going to be as big a deal as you think, partly because religiosity has declined a lot in many western nations since my parents were born (start of WW2), woman’s rights have substantially improved, LGB[0] issues have gone from “we are chemically castrating you” to “there are half a dozen openly gay and lesbian national leaders”, and some of these changes are already in motion in the rest of the world; and partly because the main cultural split in the world right now is between urban and rural within any nation, not between the nations. [0] while medical tech has improved for trans issues, I can’t really say western culture is kinder to that group today as compared to 1950, nor do I know how trans issues are regarded in the Middle East.
  - armitron 5y ago
    Look at what happened to Sweden. Gangs, bombings, no-go areas, zero integration, all in the span of a few years. Look at what's happening in France. In fact, if you look anywhere where large migrations of non-culturally compatible populations have taken place, the result is always the same: mayhem.
    - retrac 5y ago
      My interpretation is that the social problems around refugees is that they are refugees from poor places. Generally poor, young, uneducated and maybe traumatized. Here in Canada the largely upper middle class Middle Eastern immigrants integrate and assimilate fairly well. On the other hand, ethnic groups from East and South Europe where we received many refugees in the 80s and 90s still have a bit of a reputation for organised crime, much as the Italians got tarred 50 years ago. Because yes, a lot of those refugees got involved with it. What else is some young Russian or Serb with no job skills and limited language skills supposed to do in the Canadian job market back then? Bring in lots of poor uneducated people who don't speak the language and no amount of cultural compatibility will defuse the problems created.
      - armitron 5y ago
        Education, language, skills are all attributes of "cultural compatibility".

hogrider 5y ago

And yet people still having kids. The worse affected regions still have the highest natality rates.

sangnoir 5y ago
> The worse affected regions still have the highest natality rates. The same regions have the lowest per-capita carbon output. Perhaps we should tie reproductive rights to carbon footprint, to increase the proportion of low-pollution individuals. I'm only being half-sarcastic.
- decremental 5y ago
  They have low carbon footprints because they live in mud huts. I don't think they're going to be great stewards for the future of humanity. Modern civilization, that thing you're enjoying right now, was built by the people you want fewer of for some reason.
- pengaru 5y ago
  > The same regions have the lowest per-capita carbon output. Largely irrelevant. Every country aspires to increase their quality of life, burgeoning populations still living in the mud are just carbon time bombs. So, relevant in the negative sense of their per-capita output has nowhere to go but up, with a huge multiplier. It helps to view "third-world" as simply arriving in third place at the finish line of modern living; on a long enough timeline, there are no more mud huts. In the film Before the Flood, there's a part focused on India which states they have ~300M people living without electricity. A population roughly the size of the USA. In the same part, representatives from India's government make clear that India has vast coal reserves and no intention of leaving those 300M people without electricity. You're looking at an overnight arrival of the US population from the dark to using lights and refrigerators. It's not like populations with low carbon output have all mastered some kind of low impact living. They're just poor and lagging behind the more wealthy nations, don't mistake it for a lack of intention to join the first-world.
  - 5y ago