205 / Climate Apartheid: We Will All Be Climate Refugees, Eventually / Dahr Jamail

In my fourth interview with Truthout staff reporter, climate journalist, and author Dahr Jamail, we discuss some of the most dramatic and recent examples of abrupt climate disruption in recent months, how these accelerating changes are manifesting across human communities and political institutions across the planet, and how these changes are forever altering the natural world as a whole through widespread species displacement, loss, and extinction.

As we proceed into our crises-laden future, the impacts of human-caused abrupt climate disruption is manifesting on practically every level of our global systems, including the international socioeconomic system, the biosphere, global weather patterns, food production and distribution, and the mental and emotional well-being of human societies across the globe. As Dahr lays out in his most recent climate dispatch ‘Eventually, We Will All Be Climate Refugees’ for Truthout: “all of us now, if we live long enough, are likely to become climate refugees at some point … whether it be from lack of food and water, rising seas, wildfires, smoke, or extreme weather events. For many, their time as climate refugees has already begun." (http://bit.ly/2YPM4PH) With this reality in mind, we can then further understand the implications of such recent dramatic events as the record-breaking heatwave over Greenland (resulting in 12.5 billion tons of ice melting into the ocean in a single day last week), the projected spikes in food prices as a result of flooding in the Midwestern United States this Spring, an escalating migrant crisis in numerous regions around the globe, rising authoritarianism, and the rapid increase of white supremacist violence against marginalized communities — as demonstrated by the slew of recent mass shootings and terrorist attacks against refugees and immigrants the past several months (and years) in numerous locations around the world. Dahr and I attempt to weave these multiple layers of ecological collapse, nonlinear climate disruption, the Trump Administration’s flagrant nativist scapegoating of refugees and migrants, and the disintegration of complex human societies on the material and psychosocial level in this wide-discussion.

Dahr Jamail is an award-winning journalist who regularly reports on climate disruption and environmental issues for the online publication Truthout. Prior to his work reporting on environmental issues, Dahr was one of only a few unembedded journalists to report extensively from Iraq during the US led invasion in 2003. Dahr is the author of multiple books, including ‘The End Of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption,’ released January of this year.

Episode Notes:

Read Dahr’s climate dispatches and other writings at Truthout: http://bit.ly/TruthoutJamail

Learn more about Dahr and his work: http://www.dahrjamail.net

Learn more about and purchase Dahr’s book ‘The End Of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption’: http://bit.ly/TheEndOfIce

The song featured in this episode is “Take My True Love By The Hand” by The Limeliters from their self-titled album.