WhatFinger


Funds to enable them to flee, find housing, receive job training, and to enable them to find the final home of their choice

Here come the climate change refugees - more social justice



Like clockwork, they have emerged from the wood: the first of what promises to be an ever increasing wave of Third World “climate change” refugees seeking asylum in the First World.

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The inhabitants of some islands in east Papua New Guinea have appealed for “funds to enable them to flee, find housing, receive job training, and to enable them to find the final home of their choice” and have expressed the hope that “decisions made by leaders at the forthcoming climate change negotiations in Copenhagen will offer them hope,” according to the Environment Times news outlet. The implication of the appeal is that the industrialized world is responsible for “global warming” and that these nations are therefore obliged to take in yet another wave of “refugees” under the excuse of “man made climate change and industrialized pollutants and their climate impact.” According to the Environment Times, the relocation effort is headed by Ursula Rakova, a Papua New Guinea islander who quit an executive position with Oxfam in Bougainville three years ago to set up Tulele Peisa, an organization that “raises money and campaigns for social justice on behalf of her people.” Ms Rakova told an audience in Melbourne, Australia: “We have a feeling of anxiety, a feeling of uncertainty because we know that we will be losing our homes. It is our identity. It is our whole culture at stake.” There is however no firm evidence that the land to which she refers, the Carteret Islands, are being affected by “climate change.” At the best of times, these islands are no more than four or five feet above sea level and are thus always prone to tidal movements, rogue waves, storms, tsunamis, and typhoons. Even the Environment Times, which is slavishly pro-“climate change,” is forced to admit in its coverage of the “asylum” claim that “Probably (sic) due to climate change, the Carteret Islands in north east Papua New Guinea are being submerged by the sea. However, another suggestion is that tectonic movement may be causing the gradual subsidence of the atoll, or that nearby volcanic activity may also cause the islands' settling. “Historically other populated islands, for example Tuanaki in the Cook Islands, are known to have sunk entirely and relatively suddenly from causes that might be unrelated to rising sea levels.” Nonetheless, the Environment Times continues to say that, “As a result, the people that live on these tiny atoll islands have unwillingly found themselves on the front line of climate change and dependent upon the success or failure of the UN’s climate negotiations in Copenhagen.” The article goes on to point out that “one problem making their plight all the more pressing is the fact the 1951 Geneva Convention, does not protect environmental refugees, such as those displaced by climate change. “Sadly, this technicality means that communities such as the Carteret’s cannot, as yet, be granted refugee status under the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and they have subsequently found themselves excluded from the international community’s social welfare, protection and asylum systems.” In other words, the push will now be on to create a new category of “climate change refugees” which will be yet another channel through which the overpopulated Third World will be able to invade America, Europe and other First World nations. As the Environment Times article concludes: “With many millions predicted to be displaced by climate change, supporters of the Islanders have highlighted that the world needs to establish fair, realistic and funded policies which recognize that many of those most affected by climate change include those least able to fund adaptation and those least responsible for humanity’s production of greenhouse gases. Tulele Peisa believe they should not need to sail the waves alone and calls on the leaders of the world to provide moral and political leadership in Copenhagen.” Sadly, no mention is made of the Pacific Islanders who have lost their homes as a result of atomic testing by the Americans and the French. In many cases, the islands in these tests were completely obliterated. Perhaps these islanders may at some point also seek some form of delayed, but nevertheless, important social justice.


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John Burtis -- Bio and Archives

John Burtis is a former Broome County, NY firefighter, a retired Santa Monica, CA, police officer. He obtained his BA in European History at Boston University and is fluent in German. He resides in NH with his wife, Betsy.

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