The Guardian reports a study that shows that about 300 million people live on land that will be flooded by 2050 as a result of rising sea levels. In comparison the US population was about 327 million in 2018.
Since it seems very unlikely that effective measures to combat climate change will be implemented anytime soon (probably never), we need to relocate an amount of people slightly less than the entire US population.
Given that there is a worldwide anti-immigration sentiment, it seems difficult to find suitable homes for all those people. A rather small portion of those refugees could become seasteaders but it is rather questionable we can house hundreds of millions people at sea.
So unless effective anti-climate change measures are implemented, the construction of space habitats in Near-Earth Space might be the only solution.
What is likely to happen is that in the next few years, we will have environment related wars. Nothing will be done to avert the looming catastrophe
I am very sad, but you’re most likely to be right.
Absolutely. As competition over dwindling food, water, land, and other resources causes rising societal tensions and desperate migrations, the total number of refugees is likely to be much higher than the 300 million displaced by sea level rise alone by 2050.
300M is already an upscaling, and according to the worst case estimate, cited in the article in the Guardian, the number is about 650M.
I agree with Noel. Climate refugees will alter the face of this world.
So do I. Anyway, climate refugees might be a major part of first generation space settlers.