Sound Science Bite: Jan 20, 2020. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

It could be Ioane Teitiota from the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. Or, any one of the one billion people forced to move from their homes because of climate change by 2050 according to a 2015 study by the Institute for Environment and Human Security of the United Nations University. This is enough to give those in the US wanting to turn back all Central Americans seeking asylum a terminal case of heartburn.

To soften the blow of the news a bit, the one billion number is a worst-case scenario, but it will definitely be in the scores of millions. Mr. Teitiota lives in a disappearing country as sea levels rise, but the United Nations ruled against him in his effort to move to New Zealand as a climate refugee saying his situation was not dire at the moment. But the UN also ruled that people genuinely fleeing climate change disaster are genuine refugees. The most obvious refugee situation involves islands and low-lying land, but heat, drought, persistent flooding, etc, can also be involved. History is full of stories of civilizations that became extinct due to drought, but with the world population as it is, they would have nowhere to go without stepping on the toes of others.

The question of what to do about climate refugees is one of the hardest climate-change problems to solve and also one that has largely been ignored. But it will have to be faced eventually, so put an extra chair at the dinner table.