The New Trail of Tears
How climate change is forcing the relocation of species, including our own
In 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, designed to appropriate to the United States lands occupied by aboriginal Americans. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, but the army under Commander in Chief Andrew Jackson acted anyway. Now a lightning rod for condemnation of the expropriation of indigenous property, Jackson was an agent of demographic pressures and a lust for the resources found on tribal lands.
The result of this land grab and ethnic cleansing was the Trail of Tears, a highway of the dispossessed, en route from their homelands to less favorable situations away from the population centers of the European-Americans and their recently created nation. Those with the means self-deported; those who moved late moved in large numbers and suffered terrible losses.
Nearly two centuries later, we face the prospect of forced relocations on a scale that is difficult to fathom. This New Trail of Tears will involve humans on every inhabited continent, and it will impact countless other species as well. This time, the driving force is all humanity, agents of climate change through our greenhouse gas emissions.
A major consequence of climate change is the global rise in sea levels due to the melting of glaciers and the polar ice caps as well as the expansion of warmer oceans. Accompanied by more violent storms powered by the warmer atmosphere, rising seas will have a profound impact on coastal areas. Flooding is already common in coastal Florida; with just the few feet of sea-level rise expected by the end of the century, sizable portions of Miami and Fort Lauderdale will be inundated. “Superstorm” Sandy brought this lesson home to New York City in 2012.
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