Climate change is to blame for the immigrant deaths in the Mediterranean, a British environmentalist has said.
James Murray, editor of Business Green, said the deaths are “precisely the kind of disaster security analysts expect to see worsen in a world afflicted by escalating climate change.”
Admitting there may be other factors involved, including terrorism and corrupt governments, he nevertheless asserts that global warming is to blame.
“Without a rapid and successful global effort to tackle this existential threat the heart-breaking scenes of the past week and the sadness and rancour they unleash will only become more commonplace. After all, this is what climate crisis really means,” he wrote.
According to Murray, storms, floods, droughts and fires are an inevitable consequence of climate change and it’s time for scientists and meteorologists to stop opening arguments by saying “no single event can be attributed to climate change” and instead plump for “This is what climate change looks like – this is precisely the kind of extreme event we expect to see happen more often and with more intensity.”
Harking back to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon – who described the war in Darfur as “the world’s first climate change conflict” back in 2007 – Murray insists the violence triggered by the Arab Spring four years later was in part “fuelled by protests over soaring food prices”. And even the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic State is not free from the deathly touch of decades of burning fossil fuels. Murray writes:
“We know recent research has suggested climate change played a role in sparking the Syrian War that in turn has played such a big role in fuelling both the rise of ISIS and the humanitarian crisis off Europe’s southern coast.”
Murray concludes by calling for a “global effort” to tackle climate change to stop further tragedy:
“Without a rapid and successful global effort to tackle this existential threat the heart-breaking scenes of the past week and the sadness and rancour they unleash will only become more commonplace. After all, this is what climate crisis really means.”
Mark Littlewood, Director General at the Institute of Economic Affairs said the blame didn’t lie with climate change but in hypocritical standards towards labour standards and international trade.
“People are dying in their hundreds in the Mediterranean in desperate efforts to flee to the Western world. It’s gut wrenching to watch,” he told Breitbart London. “Whatever short term steps are decided up, over the long tun we must open up Europe to free trade from the developing world, stop boycotting companies that use labour practices which don’t come up to our hugely privileged first world standards and give those in poorer countries a chance of a better life without having to risk everything in a bit to cross the sea.”