Climate change, drought, and the migrant caravan

The Climate Implications of the Migrant Caravan, EcoWatch, Olivia Rosane, Oct. 29, 2018 The U.S. military will send as many as 5,000 troops to the country’s Southern border to meet thousands of refugees and migrants who are traveling north through Mexico from Central America, The Independent reported Monday.

The group of thousands grew out of 160 people who gathered at a bus stop in the crime-plagued Honduran city of San Pedro Sula on Oct. 12, BBC News explained. News of the plan spread on social media, and, by the next day, the group had reached 1,000 members.

The migrants are heading north for a variety of reasons, from unemployment to violence. But one of the underlying causes is climate change.

“Central America, in general, has had chronic impacts of climate change,” Oxfam Guatemala Country Director Ana María Mendez Libby told Earther.

That’s because of drought and irregular rainfall in something called the Dry Corridor, a region in the lowlands of Central America along the Pacific coast. Migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador has rapidly increased in the past 10 years, which coincides with a period of drought that has cost the three countries around 700,000 acres in corn and bean crops just this year.

A study led by the UN World Food Program found that the drought, rather than violence, was the driving factor causing people to leave the region to seek food and work elsewhere, National Geographic reported.

While scientists still don’t know how much the current drought, driven primarily by an increasingly erratic El Niño cycle, can be blamed on man-made climate change, experts with experience in the region know the current weather patterns are more extreme than in the past. ……… https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-implications-migrant-caravan-2616282125.html

October 29, 2018 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, NORTH AMERICA

2 Comments »

Reblogged this on jpratt27 and commented:
Climate change refugees the numbers will only grow.

Comment by John | October 30, 2018 | Reply
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1810/S00131/will-the-caravan-coup-be-trumps-october-surprise.htm

Will the Caravan Coup be Trump’s “October Surprise”?

Monday, 29 October 2018, 9:40 am
Article: Harvey Wasserman
Will the Caravan Coup be Trump’s “October Surprise” and Reichstag Fire to Cap A Week of Horror?

Treasonous “October Surprises” gave Republicans the presidency in 1968 and 1980. A staged 1933 Reichstag fire gave Hitler his dictatorship.

This year’s likeliest pretext for a Trump coup could be that “terror caravan” to the south.

Amidst yet another automatic weapons slaughter (this time aimed at the Jewish people), mail bombs, silenced media, rapist judges, dead and dissected journalists, threats to “lock up” liberals, internet chaos, stripped voter rolls and flipped vote counts, Trump will predictably escalate his goose-step chorus during this time of horror.

The corporate media will spread the last-minute “Red Shift” Big Lie while a tsunami of Koch/Adelman/Bezos-funded attack ads spew blatant racism and fascist hate.

The deal is to be sealed with an intimidated electorate, stripped voting rights and flipped ballot tallies.

That march through Mexico is the perfect October “crisis” to trigger the coup.

In 1980 Reagan treasonously took power by making sure US hostages stayed in Iran. In 1968 Nixon treasonously sabotaged the peace that did not come to Vietnam. In 1933 Hitler burned the Reichstag.

Now we face destruction of our basic rights and the planet itself—-along with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and so much more.

Green/progressive activists are pouring in their small donations, registering to vote, preparing to work the polls, defending registration rolls, demanding fair vote counts and much more.

Hundreds of excellent candidates running as Democrats are waging solid, progressive campaigns. Those inevitably shafted by stripped voter rolls and flipped vote counts must REFUSE TO CONCEDE until every last ballot—-provisional or otherwise—-is accounted for.

Trumpist hackers (Russian and otherwise) spread chaos. Democracy and Truth are the primary targets. It’s all right out of the Hitler/Rove playbook.

As the bigots’ bullets and pipe bombs fly, Trump is set to open fire at the southern border, filling his concentration camps with innocent kids, spewing the same race hating nationalism that’s paved the way for so many fascists before him.

This October, it’s no surprise, just business as usual for the latest dictatorial thug.

And for those of us dedicated to stopping him.

See you at the rallies, canvasses, phone banks and polling stations.

Comment by Harvey | October 30, 2018 | Reply