I fully agree with you, but thought that the words "out of Syria" are not really reflecting reality. According to Wikipedia[1], only about a third of the migrants originated in Syria.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_migrant_crisis#Statis...

That's true but it is referred to colloquially as "The Syrian Crisis" here, in any case I don't what the solution is, I deeply admire the Germans for what they did though.

Taking 1.5 million migrants with a population of 82 million, if the UK (my country) had done the same ratio that would have been 1.2 million, best figure I can find for UK is <20 thousand.

One thing I do wonder is what western culture will look like in a hundred years if the world bank figures are right (140-200 million displaced people).

Turkey took at least 3 mln people with the same population as Germany and nobody admires what they did. Syria itself took 1.2 mln of refugees from Iraq, nobody cared. Palestine refugees in Lebanon, Afghanistan refugees in Iran. Whole Middle East is filled with refugees from different regions. All these cases could've been prevented if so called democratic nations hold their governments accountable, there were no "climate" in wars that caused these movements. Just rational people in power with no repercussions for their actions. People have no control over what happens in their cities, but believe they have any power to fight in a global scale with climate change. A major can't handle a city where he/she lives. Now scale it to the "world government" mentioned before, which would be physically located thousands kilometers from places which it would govern. The best solution to migrant crisis you can find in Switzerland. Government does not have power over who becomes citizen, the people at places have. People with whom these newcomers would have to live. Zero conflict. Behavior and relations of people is different when one is hold accountable only to faceless bureaucrats and to real people.

Culture evolves/changes over time.

So it's a valid question as long as it's not a veiled "will there be too many brown people".

Couldn't care less one way or the other about how many brown people there are in Europe, I'm curious if western culture will be significantly altered one way or the other though - there are elements of it I like and would hope would promulgate into the future is all.

It's interesting that you can't really broach it as a question though without it been implied that racism is involved, if you can't debate a subject without been accused of racism then you leave all debate of that subject to racists since they may not care about been accused of racism.

Too many people use race as a placeholder for culture and vice versa (same with religion).

Honestly things would be better if both sides would stop hurling slurs at each other and actually debate the issues but I figure it serves them to have this kind of fight as it gains both sides followers.

I'm seeing more and more of that kind of balkanization in the UK and it's worrying, Brexit has opened some pretty nasty wounds that may not heal in my lifetime.

>I'm seeing more and more of that kind of balkanization in the UK and it's worrying

I am keeping a close eye on the proposed 'Free Ports'.

>"Can "free ports" spark a post-Brexit manufacturing boom? Jonty Bloom reports from Teesside, which plans to become the UK's newest free port, offering customs-free imports and hoping to bring back manufacturing jobs."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46349717

>"For each Free Zone, the area covered and the defined entry and exit points shall be determined by the Member State. The perimeter and the entry and exit points must be under customs supervision. Member State must communicate to the commission details of the Free Zones in operation.

>All Free Zones shall be enclosed. Persons, goods and means of transport entering or leaving Free Zones may be subject to customs controls."

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notice-3001-speci...

> Of course if we had a single rational world government for any length of time we wouldn't be in this mess.

No, you would be in another mess.

That other mess might be preferable. I'd say this will get bad, but that wouldn't cover it. We might well see gigadeath.

Take the way the US is run and make it global.

Alternatively, take the way North Korea is run and make it global. This is the only way it could work.

As a third alternative, take the way the EU is run, and make it global.

What are the problems? There is way too much diversity for a single entity to handle the various aspects.

Can anyone guess where will the first wave of climate change refugees will be from and where they'll be heading too?

Low lying islands like the Maldives will be first. But the population is relatively small. You already have climate refugees in Africa. The Sahara is spreading south. Destroying lives of those that live on the subsaharan border. They flee to neighbouring countries and eventually Europe. The major concern is countries like Bangladesh. It’s a low coastal country with a huge population.

To the extent that the Syrian civil war was aggregated by drought, we may have already seen the first climate refugees.

That's actually an interesting question.

Gut response is wherever is currently the hottest but that may not be the case since there are a bunch of factors that will effect it.

Good report on it here.

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/infographic/2018/03/19/gro...

Direct Link: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/2... (PDF)

Climate change refugees are already common.

For instance, climate change played some role in the current Venezuelan refugee crisis (the one that has Trump separating families and housing people in camps under overpasses, or bussing them to sanctuary cities).

Today, the main problem is that their government started to collapse in 2017, so they are unable to supply food to their population.

Why did the government start to collapse? Well, they have seen lower crop yields in recent years, which means more food imports, which means they are more vulnerable to embargoes, etc.

It only has data to 2016, but this site shows across the board agricultural production collapses in 2015 and 2016.

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/venezuela/agricultural-productio...

The government went into disarray in 2017.

In 2018 (and maybe earlier; tldr) US sanctions cut off oil revenue. The sanctions are due to terrorism, corruption, human trafficking, and human rights violations, which are, again symptoms of a collapsing government:

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdf

You may also remember tortilla riots a few years back when the price of corn spiked. That probably led to some migration.

Arguably, and famines that led to refugees in the last 10-20 years are due to climate change.

The issue is that we’re at a tipping point where they will become more common.

Not sure why you got downvote for an argument made with data sources but I gave you an upvote anyway.

Spirited debate is the best thing about this place.