They will not be the first climate refugees in the world, nor the last, but they certainly will be knocking on our door.

Multnomah County’s “sustainability” chief Kat West, predicts here that millions of climate refugees will swarm Portland. And soon.

We could be facing a population that tops 6 million people in the metro region in the not-too-distant future. 

The now buried climate ‘fugee prediction

Okies and Snowbirds will be making their way to Portland in heretofore unforeseen numbers because she claims the dust bowl is coming back and the Colorado river is running out of water.

West apparently didn’t get the memo about the last batch of predictions of “Climate Refugees” or she wouldn’t be making her dubious claims on the pages of the Beaverton Valley Times (here).

The “50 million climate refugees by 2020” prediction by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and seconded up by the UN, was recently scrubbed from the UN site because it was, well, not working out so well. (Thankfully bloggers found the cache of maps and predictions and widely disseminated them. See the maps and claims nearby. Stories here and here. )  The hysterics about climate refugees were further quieted when census data show that instead of losing population, the soon-to-be deserted places actually grew in numbers.

Undaunted by reality, West pressed on with her predictions in the Beaverton Valley Times and offered an action plan at the ready which, coincidentally, matched exactly what local planners are planning for Portland!

• More “smart” growth
• fewer personal cars
• more street cars
• no more money for street repairs
• get rid of borders and autonomy that currently allow us to make our own choices.  

See?

First, our bright-line test should be “no new money for old ways.” Let’s draw a line in the sand and commit through all our planning and investments to integrated land use, transportation, natural resource, health and economic-prosperity strategies that prepare us for a future of significantly higher energy prices and greater demands on public infrastructure, services and natural resources. Second, we need to “think regionally and act regionally.” The time for border disputes and planning and investing in silos must end.

We’ll live in high density, bicycle and transit oriented cracker boxes and we’ll call them Obamavilles– (OK, so Al Gore, Tom Friedman, and Barack Obama don’t have to live there, but the rest of us should!) We’ll be planned into said cracker boxes in order to do our part for the children for global warming, global cooling, climate change, population explosion, climate disruption, ozone depletion–I’m losing track, which crisis are we in now? 

We really have only two choices: stamp our feet in frustration or seize this opportunity to prepare for these inevitable guests. If we choose opportunity, we need to start incorporating a revised population estimate into our planning scenarios immediately.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule

First, the anointed identify or, more usually, manufacture a crisis. Sowell’s book reviews three such crises: poverty, crime, and teen pregnancy, all of which were declining in the 1960s when the liberals turned them into crises. The crises relevant to this blog include such things as urban sprawl (totally manufactured as in fact it is not a problem at all) and auto driving (while some of the effects of driving are negative, these are easily corrected while the overall benefits of driving are positive).
Second, the anointed propose a solution that inevitably involves government action. Sowell makes it clear that the the leadership of the elites go out of their way to define or manufacture the crises in ways that make it appear the government action are the only solutions.
Third, once the solution is implemented, the results turn out to be very different, and often far worse, than predicted by the anointed. Crime, poverty, and teen pregnancy went up, not down, when government stepped in to “fix” these problems in the 1960s. In the case of urban planning, anti-sprawl policies made housing unaffordable and led to the recent mortgage crisis. Anti-automobile policies make congestion worse and therefore waste even more energy and produce more pollution.

The flat earthers, in asserting this latest climate boogeyman theory, are floating another hyperbolic problem for government to “solve.” From their high perch they will continue the anointed’s policies of controlling our movements, retarding economic growth and diminishing individual freedom.

Like Justin Bieber, belly shirts, MC Hammer pants and the hole in the ozone layer, this should be considered as just another fad. Let it pass into ignominy where it belongs.