Under the pressure of increasing climate change, the second half of this century will see the start of large climate migrations. That much is certain. Many governments are already forecasting them, and some are even starting to prepare for them.
These migrations usually result in the collapse of civilisations. Our civilisation would by no means be the first to collapse in this way. Ancient Egypt, for example, collapsed at least once as a result of climate migrations.
But there is a way to avoid this fate: reforming political and social systems according to the rules of diversity and inclusion. The sooner these systems are created and made more robust, the more resilient a society will be, in the sense that it will be able to absorb large numbers of climate migrants without civilisation suffering. Clearly, if you have a society that thrives on diversity and inclusion, it will be able to absorb the diversity of migrants without major social costs. Not without difficulties, but without major social costs.
Conversely, the more rigid, authoritarian and conservative a society is, the more hostile it is to diversity and inclusion, the greater the risk that it will collapse as a result of climate migration. And these migrations, again, are certain: we will witness their beginning in our lifetime. They are at most 30 years away.
So if we want our children and grandchildren, when they grow up, not to live in a Mad Max world, the only feasible solution is to become progressive - to advocate for as open, diverse and fluid a society as possible; to support policies and reforms that move the society in that direction; and to become part of the solution, not part of the problem.
If not out of conviction - because, whatever one may say, it's really cool to live in such a society, that's why people migrate to Western and Northern Europe, not to China, Russia orTurkey - then at least out of pragmatism: hopefully we don't want a social apocalypse for our children and grandchildren. Let's leave that apocalypse to China, Russia and other regimes that cannot accommodate diversity and inclusion.
Without public systems and a new culture that allows for equality in difference and the widest possible diversity, today's societies will not cope with climate migration. This is why what starts now with the new wave of civil rights and the search for new democratic formulas, with the promotion of women's rights, the LGBT community and so on, will make it possible to absorb the sometimes radical difference represented by climate migrants.
It's not a trifle. It's not even ideology, as conservatives and reactionaries of the day claim. It's pure pragmatism. There is simply no other way to avoid the social implosion that can be generated by climate migration.
Consider that the so-called EU migrant crisis of 2013-2015 gave Western societies a big headache and led to the unprecedented resurgence of sovereignist, isolationist and reactionary movements. And this happened at a time when the number of those migrants did not exceed 5% of the total population.
This shows that the current public systems - both social and political - are not prepared to cope with the inevitable climate migration. All the more so as those migrations will be significantly larger than the one in 2013-2015.
To sum it up, only the massive and rapid reform of these public systems by focusing them on diversity and inclusion will be able to avoid the social apocalypse.
So it’s time to take progressivism very seriously. It is the only pragmatic solution we have that allows us to deal with climate migration with a reasonable degree of success.
Not necessarily for us - we will probably be dead or nearly dead by then, we won't matter anyway - but for our children and grandchildren, so that when they too reach adulthood, they will have the chance to live in societies that still function.
