US Suffers World's First Climate Change Exodus: Study

NO SHIT, SHERLOCK

US Suffers World's First Climate Change Exodus: Study:

The first mass exodus of people fleeing the disastrous effects of climate change is not happening in low-lying Pacific islands but in the world's richest country, a US study said.
'The first massive movement of climate refugees has been that of people away from the Gulf Coast of the United States,' said the Earth Policy Institute, which has warned for years that climate change demands action now.

This 29 August, 2005 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite image shows Hurricane Katrina as it makes landfall. The first mass exodus of people fleeing the disastrous effects of climate change is not happening in low-lying Pacific islands but in the world's richest country, a US study said.(AFP/NOAA-HO/File)

Institute president Lester Brown said that about a quarter of a million people who fled the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina a year ago must now be classed as 'refugees'.
'
Interestingly, the country to suffer the most damage from a hurricane is also primarily responsible for global warming,' he said.

The United States is the world's largest consumer of energy, but has refused to sign up to the Kyoto pact aimed at reducing emissions of gases that scientists say are to blame for heating up the Earth.

Many environmentalists had expected the first big population shift to come somewhere like the Tuamotu islands in French Polynesia, the world's largest chain of atolls which rise barely metres (feet) from the Pacific.
Rising sea levels are part of the problem afflicting low-lying places but, experts argue, so are tropical storms that are mounting in ferocity because of warmer ocean temperatures.