Storming The Wall book

The Rising Storm

In Todd Miller’s prescient new book, Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security, the Tucson journalist and author travels the globe to document how climate disasters are uprooting people from their homes.

August 14, 2017 | Source: Texas Observer | by Melissa del Bosque

A new book on climate and migration predicts a future of “guards, guns and gates” unless we act soon.

In Todd Miller’s prescient new book, Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security, the Tucson journalist and author travels the globe to document how climate disasters are uprooting people from their homes.

Miller visits the Philippines in the wake of 2013’s devastating Typhoon Haiyan, as well as Central America and other global hot spots, documenting a rapidly changing world of rising sea levels, melting ice caps and border walls guarded by machine gun-toting men. He walks on a pilgrimage with climate activists to the United Nations’ climate summit in Paris, where a former Filipino negotiator turned activist tells Miller a grassroots movement is the only solution to push wealthier nations to act: “Solidarity is not an alternative, it is not an option, it is our only chance.”

Despite rampant climate-change denialism in Washington, including in Trump’s White House, the military and the Department of Homeland Security already accept that the threat is real. As Miller writes, the government has “begun preparing for the future dislocations of people, global instabilities and threats to U.S. political and economic interests due to climate destabilization.”

Despite the dire predictions, Miller told the Observer that there is much to hope for and that he was inspired by the resilience he found among communities around the globe.