Europe's Climate Urgency: Driven by Green Ideals or Fear of an African Refugees?

Summary

I’ve always been a bit puzzled by the intensity of Europe's focus on climate change. For East Asia, the motivation seemed clear: countries like Japan and China are almost entirely dependent on imported oil and gas. For them, decarbonization isn't just an environmental goal; it's a matter of national and economic security.But Europe? On the surface, their energy situation seems less dire. Norway and the UK (specifically Scotland) have significant oil and gas reserves. Germany has historically been a coal powerhouse, and France is famously reliant on its fleet of nuclear power plants. The recent scramble to get off Russian gas is just that—recent. So why the decades-long, almost obsessive push for a green transition?Greta started protesting when she was age 15 in Sweden. Official on Britanica.After digging into the cascading effects of climate change, particularly in Africa, a more profound and unsettling picture emerges. Europe's climate policy isn't just about emissions or energy independence. It's deeply rooted in a fear of a future defined by uncontrollable, continuous migration crises fueled by a climate-ravaged, demographically exploding African continent at its doorstep.Europeans are thinking of moving because the house is too hot. It's not the matter of survival like flood or starvation.The Looming Crisis South of the MediterraneanThe scenario that keeps European strategists up at night is a multi-stage domino effect. It begins not in Brussels or Berlin, but thousands of kilometers south, in the Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa.1. The African Climate Catalyst:Africa faces disproportionate burden from climate change and adaptation costs - World Meteorological Organization, 2024The first domino is the accelerating impact of global warming on Africa. This isn't a future problem; it's happening now. The United Nations has already attributed famines, like the one in Madagascar, directly to climate change. The Horn of Africa has seen devastating multi-year droughts, dis...