My Trip to Claremont McKenna College

I will be speaking about Climatopolis at the Claremont McKenna College Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on Thursday December 2nd.  As a warm up, I gave a lecture to my UCLA undergrads about the economics of climate change adaptation.  They pushed me on the broad issue of international migration.  Especially in the developing world, it will help us to adapt to climate change if people can move from a Bangladesh to Southern China.  Ted Miguel and co-authors have argued that in Africa that climate change will increase deaths from Civil War.  I presume that the causal story here will be that heat waves and natural disasters will displace people from where they currently live and in the name of adaptation they will encroach on other people's land and this will trigger violence and a cage match.

In my "win-win" vision of migration, there will be "environmental refugees" eager to move away from their flooded current home BUT there will be destinations such as southern China who welcome the immigrants.  Why? Not due to charity but due to gains to trade.  Educated, high income people need the time and help of low skilled people to supply basic services such as cooking and cleaning and home maintenance.  There are gains to trade and generations of immigrants have started their rise "up the ladder" based on these first steps. As India and China develop, there may be more opportunities for the people of Bangladesh than the pessimists think there will be.  This is obviously an empirical prediction and as time passes it will be proved to be true or false.