vtsnowedin wrote:There is a hard truth that is going to be understood here before much longer. That is regardless of any actions both negative or positive by European or American governments that the population of the Middle East and North Africa exceeds the carrying capacity of the land. As countries run out of oil to export they will no longer be able to pay for the import of food ,water etc. that they need to survive. The excess population will try to emigrate to more prosperous regions. Europe and the USA primarily but the declining economies of all possible destinations will force the people there to adopt lifeboat ethics and close their borders. That means that millions will die at the borders or where they came from. This is going to happen and there is nothing anybody can do about it. Any effort to share the pain will result only in your own country sharing the deaths.
OK. Well said, and certainly correct in everything.
Now, i'll throw in the obligatory curve ball, and acknowledge that lifeboat ethics are an inevitability. Here's the pitch: how do we, as a western society (the haves) politically handle the onslaught of the millions and millions of people in their lifeboats (the have nots)? Actions and in-actions have consequences. How do we politically acknowledge and literally enforce an ambivalence to the millions of people asking for help, only to turn them away because their part of our collective world has run out of resources necessary to support life? Of course, this is a natural and expected part of squeezing through the bottleneck, but how as a civilized society do we cope with our own choices to stand on the sidelines and witness the devastation being endured by the vast majority of other human beings?
For what it's worth, i'm not offering any answers to these questions. I don't have any.