Prerna Lal puts anti-immigrant “Environativists” on blast in her expert article, “How Do You Make A Rabid Right Winger Believe in Global Warming?”
Answer: Blame it on immigrants.
The anti-immigrant lobby, led by the Center for Immigration Studies, has long accused immigrants for global warming and climate change, targeting organizations such as Sierra Club to adopt anti-immigrant goals. ‘Environativists’ even attacked the progressive principles for immigration reform recently, arguing that environmental sustainability and immigration are at odds with one another.
The issue cuts through the heart of migrant rights and environmental justice. Why is it alright for the United States to export its pollution to poorer countries but not import people from the countries it is polluting? What about travel and tourism, including the exportation of food and privatized water. Does that not contribute to global warming? Trade liberalization under GATT, NAFTA and CAFTA keeps chipping away at environmental protections while displacing people from their countries and yet, environativists still point the finger towards immigrants who are simply trying to look for a better way of life.
Immigration and global warming are not zero-sum games. As a Pacific Islander, I can say for a fact that global warming is directly leading to immigration from the “Third World” (South) to the “First World” (North). Islands like Kiribati and Tuvalu are going under water as a result of emissions by countries such as Australia and the United States. Developing and underdeveloped countries are facing more climatic variations leading to increased agriculture and crop loss, not to mention devastation from higher magnitude hurricanes that does encourage migration to countries in the North. So instead of a definite immigration leads to global warming equation, we can also say that global warming leads to migration in greater numbers than we would like.
Read the entire article at http://immigration.change.org/blog/view/how_do_you_make_a_rabid_right_winger_believe_in_global_warming.