Flash of sanity at the UN?!: "Climate change is never the only reason why people move"

CLIMATE CHANGE: "Last Straw" Pushes Millions from Their Homes - IPS

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 11, 2011 (IPS) - With political will to dramatically cut the world's greenhouse gas emissions failing to materialise, a multi-pronged approach is needed to protect the millions of people who are being displaced as a result of environmental factors driven largely by climate change, experts say.
...
Speaking at a conference at Columbia Law School in May on migration and climate change, Klein-Solomon stressed that it was important to grasp these facts to counter "the overwhelming fears of the developed world being awash with people who are coming into their countries, taking jobs and burdening social security mechanisms".

Even under worst case scenarios, in which some 250 million people could be displaced due to climate change over the next 25 to 30 years, it still would be "a tiny portion of the world's population", she said.

"We are really not talking about enormous numbers relative to global populations and we are not talking about hordes of people flooding into the Western, industrialised, developed countries. We do not need further repressive legislation and xenophobic debates as a result of this discussion," she added.
...
"[I]t is a bit like the straw that broke the camel's back," said Jane McAdams, an expert on refugees and international migration law at the University of New South Wales.

"Climate change is never the only reason why people move, there are always other factors like underlying socioeconomic conditions, for example," she told IPS.