Barbarians at the Border
"The migrant story is a little more nuanced than Elon Musk might have you believe."
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| A bullet-shuttered window of the entrance to a kindergarten is seen in Kibbutz Be'eri, Oct. 11, 2023. Baz Ratner/AP |
About 200,000 years ago, a woman was born whose mitochondrial DNA became the source DNA of every person alive today. All of us are her descendants. At that time, the modern human population was small—about 10,000-20,000. It would later ebb and flow but never get as small as the 1,280 breeding-age individuals that our Simian ancestral population averaged in Africa some 900,000 years ago.
Hominid populations expanded to perhaps 2.5 million 70,000 years ago. Then we hit a bottleneck. The Toba supereruption in Indonesia plunged global mean temperature by 2.3°C (4.1 °F) and the cold lasted perhaps 1000 years. Deprived of food, our human ancestors were nearly extinguished. A few thousand made it through that dark age. Genetic bottlenecks from Toba have also been shown to have occurred in populations of chimps, macaques, cheetahs, and tigers.
Analyses of mitochondrial DNA have estimated that a major migration from Africa occurred during the Toba catastrophe. Small bands crossed the Red Sea to Yemen and followed the coast into the Levant (Sinai/Syria/Jordan/Persia), Southeast Asia, and Oceania. Other trails branched off to the West, into Europe. Along the way, H. sapiens interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans and left a sordid trail of extinguished megafauna from the European steppes to Australia.
The farther north they traveled, the more they adapted—tailoring clothing from the pelts of fur-bearing animals, making shelters with hearths, and storing meat in permafrost lockers. Human DNA extracted from coprolites—fossilized feces—has been found in Oregon dated to the last gradual glaciation 14,300 years ago. The last world regions to be permanently settled were the Pacific Islands and the Arctic, inhabited during the 1st millennium CE.
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Nomads at Heart
In the above map, Africa, at the start of all migration, is top left.
South America is at the far right. Migration patterns are based on
studies of mitochondrial DNA. Dashed lines are hypothetical migrations.
The numbers represent thousand years before present. The blue line
represents area covered in ice or tundra during the last great ice age.
The letters are the mitochondrial DNA haplogroups (pure motherly
lineages). Haplogroups can be used to define genetic populations and are
often geographically oriented. For example, the following are common
divisions for mtDNA haplogroups:
African: L, L1, L2, L3
Near Eastern: J, N
Southern European: J, K
General European: H, V
Northern European: T, U, X
Asian: A, B, C, D, E, F, G (note: M is composed of C, D, E, and G)
Native American: A, B, C, D, and sometimes X.
The
letters I, J, and K shown in Europe are apparently included by mistake,
as they refer to Y-DNA haplogroups. The dashed path for X, stopping in
Iceland, gestures at the "Solutrean hypothesis", an idea discussed in
the popular media at the time the map was made but mostly discredited
since.
Recent Events
This exponential disruption is just the beginning of what David Wallace-Wells, in his book The Uninhabitable Earth, calls
“The Great Dying:” a worldwide economic decline, sharply deteriorated
living conditions, disruption to basic government functions and
widespread hunger. Looking deeper still into the future, the predictions
are even more dire.
— The New York Times, April 10, 2019
“Managed
realignment,” or “managed retreat,” is one response. In the United
States, this often takes the form of "buyout" programs, in which the
government acquires and relocates or demolishes at-risk properties. In
the UK, there are recent examples of farms and cultivated fields being intentionally returned to marshland
and sea bird habitats. My own ancestral home in Romney Marsh, Kent (c.
1200-1635) may become one such program, with the arches of Norman church
ruins slowly disappearing under the rising English Channel.
Rising sea levels in the 22nd century. On an ice-free Earth, Istanbul,
Baghdad, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and
London are all under water.
Few places have this foresight. In 2021,
storms, floods, landslides, wildfires, and droughts triggered 23.7
million internal displacements, 80% of them women. By 2023 many of those
same internal displacements had matured into external displacements as
valiant husbands and young adult children found the money to escape
horrid conditions in refugee camps and successfully outmigrated their
remaining families.
The United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that an average of 20 million people are
forcibly displaced from their countries by weather-related events every
year. The most common projection is that the world will have 150–300
million people displaced by climate change by 2050. That is a 10x uptick
over the next 30 years.
First, let’s be clear. Immigration
is a problem. So is emigration. Climate change will make both
catastrophically worse. Most reliable estimates of the carrying
capacity of the planet by mid-century fall in the range of 1 to 2
billion. By “reliable,” I mean science-based and factoring in the
effects of rapid climate change on agriculture, water supplies, sea
level rise, vector-borne disease, and biodiversity destruction. Some,
like the Limits to Growth sequelae, even take microplastics into account through a morbid pollution equation.
Contrast
that 1 billion with today’s 7.9 billion people, topping 8 billion by
2024, and projected, but by no means certain, to hit 9 billion in 2042.
Like any exponential curve, this hockey stick began tilting upward
after the Second World War and continues to incline more steeply by the
year, abbreviating its doubling time with each generation. And yet, on
the human evolutionary time scale, Homo colossus is a relatively recent phenomenon.
—Coping with Katsaridaphobia (The Great Change, April, 2019)
National
and international courts have been besieged with cases for refuge
brought by “climate change refugees.” Almost universally these have been
rejected, but in January 2020, the UN Human Rights Committee ruled
that it was a human rights violation to force refugees to return “to
countries where climate change poses an immediate threat.” The European
Union has yet to adopt any continent-wide convention on the status of
climate migrants, even though it is already housing an estimated 700,000
of them. The USA flatly rejects that as a condition for acceptance.
The Musk Mission
Last week he visited Eagle Pass, Texas, for a firsthand
look at the unfolding migration crisis, and streamed it live on his
social-media platform, X (formerly known as Twitter), so that his
hundred and fifty million followers could “see what’s really going on.”
On October 1st, Elon Musk posted three videos
blaming President Biden for the latest migrant deluge, thereby forcing
the president to renege on a campaign pledge and resume work on the
Great Southern Wall (a useless diversion threatening 93 endangered species).
Musk is calling his trendy long-form video “citizen journalism” in
contrast with “legacy media,” which presumedly misses the story because
of editorial biases. Musk’s filter-free rant resembles journalism in
name only. Fact-check: as of August, 3.6 million crossers have been
returned to Latin America since Biden took office. Contrast that with 57,437 returned during President Trump’s last year in office.
Musk’s
video repeats the same thinking that has mired debates about the border
for the past several decades: partisans insisting on their truth about
the border, unwilling to find common ground to pass comprehensive
reform.
***
Had he wanted to, Musk could have spoken with
immigration attorneys who advocate tirelessly for their clients, despite
knowing that many of their applications to stay in the United States
will be rejected. He could have shown the bustling border towns where
the most visible border crossers are U.S. citizens entering Mexico to
have a meal, see a doctor, or buy artwork, and Mexican citizens heading
north to shop, work, and attend school. He could have shown the
undocumented agriculture and garment workers toiling to feed and clothe
us, or the environmental, political, and economic catastrophes that lead
migrants to make the difficult decision to uproot their lives and break
apart their families. These are also unfiltered truths about the
border. They wouldn’t have diminished Musk’s point that there is a
problem that needs to be solved, but they would have given his many
millions of followers a better understanding of the gravity of the task
at hand.
The
people of Central America and the Caribbean are faced with worsening
weather events that will only exacerbate this issue. A “Dry Corridor”
extends from Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala to
Mexico. It is home to 181 million people, 2.25% of the world
population, half of them subsistence farmers.
Central
America (modified from CIESIN et al., 2011). Volcanoes are identified
by white triangles and archeological sites by purple stars.
In 2015, due to the strongest El Niño in recorded history, hundreds
of thousands of Central American farmers lost a portion or the entirety
of their crops. In Guatemala, the drought caused a food shortage that
left 3 million people struggling to feed themselves. They are especially
vulnerable to the meandering polar vortex, brought on by the loss of
the Arctic sea ice. Hard frosts can kill a whole season’s worth of crops
in a night. New pests are becoming more prevalent at lower elevations
with decreased rainfall and overuse of Green Revolution agrochemicals.
In 2018, half of the 94,000 Guatemalans deported from the United States
and México were from these western highlands.
The same El Niño
cycle caused Honduras to lose 72% of its corn and 75% of its bean
production. World Bank predicts that by 2050, worsening droughts and
flooding from climate change could displace up to 4 million people in
the region.
In the above map, Africa, at the start of all migration, is top left. South America is at the far right. Migration patterns are based on studies of mitochondrial DNA. Dashed lines are hypothetical migrations. The numbers represent thousand years before present. The blue line represents area covered in ice or tundra during the last great ice age. The letters are the mitochondrial DNA haplogroups (pure motherly lineages). Haplogroups can be used to define genetic populations and are often geographically oriented. For example, the following are common divisions for mtDNA haplogroups:
African: L, L1, L2, L3
Near Eastern: J, N
Southern European: J, K
General European: H, V
Northern European: T, U, X
Asian: A, B, C, D, E, F, G (note: M is composed of C, D, E, and G)
Native American: A, B, C, D, and sometimes X.
The letters I, J, and K shown in Europe are apparently included by mistake, as they refer to Y-DNA haplogroups. The dashed path for X, stopping in Iceland, gestures at the "Solutrean hypothesis", an idea discussed in the popular media at the time the map was made but mostly discredited since.
Recent Events
This exponential disruption is just the beginning of what David Wallace-Wells, in his book The Uninhabitable Earth, calls “The Great Dying:” a worldwide economic decline, sharply deteriorated living conditions, disruption to basic government functions and widespread hunger. Looking deeper still into the future, the predictions are even more dire.
— The New York Times, April 10, 2019
“Managed realignment,” or “managed retreat,” is one response. In the United States, this often takes the form of "buyout" programs, in which the government acquires and relocates or demolishes at-risk properties. In the UK, there are recent examples of farms and cultivated fields being intentionally returned to marshland and sea bird habitats. My own ancestral home in Romney Marsh, Kent (c. 1200-1635) may become one such program, with the arches of Norman church ruins slowly disappearing under the rising English Channel.
Rising sea levels in the 22nd century. On an ice-free Earth, Istanbul,
Baghdad, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and
London are all under water.
Few places have this foresight. In 2021, storms, floods, landslides, wildfires, and droughts triggered 23.7 million internal displacements, 80% of them women. By 2023 many of those same internal displacements had matured into external displacements as valiant husbands and young adult children found the money to escape horrid conditions in refugee camps and successfully outmigrated their remaining families.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that an average of 20 million people are forcibly displaced from their countries by weather-related events every year. The most common projection is that the world will have 150–300 million people displaced by climate change by 2050. That is a 10x uptick over the next 30 years.
First, let’s be clear. Immigration is a problem. So is emigration. Climate change will make both catastrophically worse. Most reliable estimates of the carrying capacity of the planet by mid-century fall in the range of 1 to 2 billion. By “reliable,” I mean science-based and factoring in the effects of rapid climate change on agriculture, water supplies, sea level rise, vector-borne disease, and biodiversity destruction. Some, like the Limits to Growth sequelae, even take microplastics into account through a morbid pollution equation.
Contrast that 1 billion with today’s 7.9 billion people, topping 8 billion by 2024, and projected, but by no means certain, to hit 9 billion in 2042. Like any exponential curve, this hockey stick began tilting upward after the Second World War and continues to incline more steeply by the year, abbreviating its doubling time with each generation. And yet, on the human evolutionary time scale, Homo colossus is a relatively recent phenomenon.
—Coping with Katsaridaphobia (The Great Change, April, 2019)
National and international courts have been besieged with cases for refuge brought by “climate change refugees.” Almost universally these have been rejected, but in January 2020, the UN Human Rights Committee ruled that it was a human rights violation to force refugees to return “to countries where climate change poses an immediate threat.” The European Union has yet to adopt any continent-wide convention on the status of climate migrants, even though it is already housing an estimated 700,000 of them. The USA flatly rejects that as a condition for acceptance.
The Musk Mission
Last week he visited Eagle Pass, Texas, for a firsthand look at the unfolding migration crisis, and streamed it live on his social-media platform, X (formerly known as Twitter), so that his hundred and fifty million followers could “see what’s really going on.”
On October 1st, Elon Musk posted three videos blaming President Biden for the latest migrant deluge, thereby forcing the president to renege on a campaign pledge and resume work on the Great Southern Wall (a useless diversion threatening 93 endangered species). Musk is calling his trendy long-form video “citizen journalism” in contrast with “legacy media,” which presumedly misses the story because of editorial biases. Musk’s filter-free rant resembles journalism in name only. Fact-check: as of August, 3.6 million crossers have been returned to Latin America since Biden took office. Contrast that with 57,437 returned during President Trump’s last year in office.
Musk’s video repeats the same thinking that has mired debates about the border for the past several decades: partisans insisting on their truth about the border, unwilling to find common ground to pass comprehensive reform.
***
Had he wanted to, Musk could have spoken with immigration attorneys who advocate tirelessly for their clients, despite knowing that many of their applications to stay in the United States will be rejected. He could have shown the bustling border towns where the most visible border crossers are U.S. citizens entering Mexico to have a meal, see a doctor, or buy artwork, and Mexican citizens heading north to shop, work, and attend school. He could have shown the undocumented agriculture and garment workers toiling to feed and clothe us, or the environmental, political, and economic catastrophes that lead migrants to make the difficult decision to uproot their lives and break apart their families. These are also unfiltered truths about the border. They wouldn’t have diminished Musk’s point that there is a problem that needs to be solved, but they would have given his many millions of followers a better understanding of the gravity of the task at hand.
The people of Central America and the Caribbean are faced with worsening weather events that will only exacerbate this issue. A “Dry Corridor” extends from Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala to Mexico. It is home to 181 million people, 2.25% of the world population, half of them subsistence farmers.
 |
Central America (modified from CIESIN et al., 2011). Volcanoes are identified by white triangles and archeological sites by purple stars. |
In 2015, due to the strongest El Niño in recorded history, hundreds of thousands of Central American farmers lost a portion or the entirety of their crops. In Guatemala, the drought caused a food shortage that left 3 million people struggling to feed themselves. They are especially vulnerable to the meandering polar vortex, brought on by the loss of the Arctic sea ice. Hard frosts can kill a whole season’s worth of crops in a night. New pests are becoming more prevalent at lower elevations with decreased rainfall and overuse of Green Revolution agrochemicals. In 2018, half of the 94,000 Guatemalans deported from the United States and México were from these western highlands.
The Best of the Best
Tyson Yunkaporta, author of Sand Talk, speaks eloquently about how experiences of ‘disaster' and transformation can bring out the best in people. “Most of us have been displaced from those cultures of origin,” he writes, “ a global diaspora of refugees severed not only from land but from the sheer genius that comes from belonging in symbiotic relation to it.” And yet, that is precisely what immigrants do when given the basics—reconnect to place.
Yunkaporta says something else in Sand Talk that is worth remembering. “The war between good and evil is in reality an imposition of stupidity and simplicity over wisdom and complexity.”
The war on the border—and all the anti-immigration rhetoric—is the imposition of stupidity and simplicity. Can we not see a massive tidal wave forming out at the horizon? It will not be enough to build seawalls or retreat to higher ground (although we’ll do both of those). We need to buffer the surge with climate-adaptive, regenerative agricultural surpluses, refugee shelters and work programs, schools, and clinics. We need to stop winging and setting political fires by stoking people’s fears. That doesn’t help anything, Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz. We need to recognize that there is power in slowing the birthrate and building new economies on migration flows. There lies the innovation. There lies hope. Maybe even of a kind that will save our collective derriere.
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I first visited Murad AlKufash at
his family farm in the West Bank in 1991 when, as a teenager, he was
just beginning to study permaculture. He was learning from my friend Jan
Bang, founder of the Green Kibbutz movement, and at that time, one
could freely cross the Green Line without checkpoints. I returned a
number of times to Murad’s village, Marda, to teach permaculture and
ecovillage design and also brought Murad to our Ecovillage Training
Center in Tennessee. GVI also helped bring him to Copenhagen for the
COP15 UN Climate Summit.
In 2022, Murad visited The Farm again to learn more about biochar. He told us the Marda Permaculture Farm we visited has had a rough go of it in recent years. Several times the IDF has bulldozed the gardens and orchards and set fire to his hoop houses. Pigs from the illegal settlement up the hill are released to wreck his garden at night but he has put up ingenious fences made from old tires to keep them out. Soldiers and settlers have cut and burned thousand-year-old olive groves that his family had tended. Still, he continues his nonviolent "Peace through Permaculture" workshops and demonstration dryland farming without complaint. All are welcome. I am grateful to say that we've been able to channel many thousand dollars of donations through our tax exemption since the start of Covid, when of course, most Palestinians had access to neither vaccines nor advanced care, and he had to suspend workshops and apprenticeships that were his mainstay.
Our permaculture partners in the UK set up a crowdfunding campaign that is still active and I would encourage anyone wishing to support peace in the Middle East through practical demonstrations like food and water security and self-sovereignty to contribute.
Going back to the early 1990s, Global Village has also been supporting the Green Kibbutz Network. Just to remind those unfamiliar with the history, the migration of idealistic Zionist socialists out of Russia into Trans-Jordan began with the first utopian experiment, Kvuzat Deganya, in 1910. From then until the Nakba in 1948, and even after, Kibbutzniks maintained friendly relationships with indigenous Arab populations. One of the Kvuzat founders wrote:
We knew more and more certainly that the ways of the old settlements were not for us… with Jews on top and Arabs working for them; anyway, we thought that there shouldn't be employers and employed at all. There must be a better way.
By their collective labor and as a refuge from migrant politics, the kibbutznik population grew to 129,000 in 1989 (up from 12 in 1910). Devoted to gender, race and ethnic equality, some were secular, even staunchly atheistic, proudly proclaiming themselves "monasteries without God.”
Now, knowing that, understand this. Twenty-three kibbutzim were swept up in the Hamas massacre and rampage of destruction of October 7, 2023. Hundreds of kibbutz residents were murdered or abducted. Hundreds of buildings and infrastructure have been destroyed. The kibbutzim affected: Kerem Shalom, Sufa, Holit, Nir Yitzhak, Magen, Nir Oz, Nirim, Ein Ha’Shlosha, Kisufim, Re’im, Be’eri, Nahal Oz, Kfar Aza, Mefalsim, Erez, Nir Am, Gevim, Or Ha’Ner, Bror Hayil, Yad Mordechai, Zikim, Karmiya, and Gvar’am.
Survivors are in a state of shock. How do you begin to attend 112 funerals for those aged from less than one to over 80, as they are doing in Kibbutz Be’eri? A Kibbutz Movement fund has been set up to aid the emergency needs of these people, many of whom are now themselves refugees. To donate please go to https://www.jgive.com/new/en/usd/donation-targets/110241 or contact donate.kibbutz@tkz.co.il
I do not wish to enter into a debate as to the definition of terrorism. Yes, I know that at least 38 Palestinian children were killed by the occupying army in the West Bank in 2023, prior to the October 5th storming and desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque by Jews under protection of IDF and the October 7th response by Hamas. I know about the indignities suffered under internationally condoned apartheid. I only want to call for peace now and help those in greatest need, urgently.
And thanks once more for your support of the Global Village Institute. Please feel free to share this post, or any part of it.
Thank you for reading The Great Change.
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