If there’s a problem which Paul Murphy can’t blame on climate change, humanity hasn’t discovered it yet. Like NASA’s search for extraterrestrial life, that particular quest is still ongoing, with no end in sight thus far.
The latest example of this came in the Dáil this week, when the People Before Profit TD attributed Ireland’s surge in asylum claims to the influence of cow farts on the weather. Because why wouldn’t they be related?
“People who arrive here are fleeing wars, climate change and brutal oppression,” Murphy said this week in the Dáil.
“They are not responsible for the housing crisis, which existed well before they arrived. Blaming asylum seekers plays into the hands of those profiting from that crisis, namely, corporate landlords and big developers.
“Instead of being divided, we need to unite, welcome those coming here and fight together for the homes and services we all need.”
He also added that “refugees are welcome here.”
Very briefly, it has to be pointed out that there’s a very rich irony in a self-described “Communist” and “Marxist TD” denouncing big business and corporate greed regarding immigration, when it’s a known fact that mass migration plays directly into the hands of those same corporatist entities by providing them with cheap labour and soaring housing demand.
Met a real life aggressive far right populist while canvassing yesterday. He roared "you're a communist." Well yes, I'm a Marxist for a classless society. "Pro-abortion" he said, "pro-choice" I replied. But then, "controlled by George Soros". Ehhhh no sorry, that's just wrong.
— Paul Murphy 🏳️⚧️ (@paulmurphy_TD) May 19, 2019
Most people who object to mass immigration don’t generally hold animosity towards the immigrants themselves, but towards the politicians who promote such policies that lower ordinary people’s quality of life.
For evidence of this, cast your mind back to 2019, when the Central Bank was complaining that there were “not enough migrants arriving to keep pay down.”
Not enough migrants arriving to keep pay down – Central Bank https://t.co/1AwgTqV4jh pic.twitter.com/6CyXfTgJMC
— Irish Independent Business (@IndoBusiness) July 30, 2019
As per the laws of supply and demand, the more workers you have who are willing to work for less, the worse off every employee in the same sector becomes. And the only beneficiary of that arrangement is the big business employer, who can now get away with paying his workers peanuts.
Pro-open borders socialists like Murphy are useful idiots of this system, and contribute directly to that which they despise most. Housing resources are finite, and trying to house the world during a housing crisis will obviously result in shortages and skyrocketing prices, as anyone with an IQ over room temperature could tell you.
But all of that is neither here nor there.
The fact of the matter is, it makes no sense to say that refugees are coming to Ireland due to climate change, primarily because the UN’s own refugee agency has explicitly refused to endorse or acknowledge the term “climate refugee,” or accept that climate change alone is a valid reason to claim asylum. It’s literally not a thing.
Why exactly, you might ask? Well, because they don’t believe that such a displaced person would meet the criteria to receive refugee status, by definition.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) explains on its website:
The organisation goes on to explain that someone may be able to claim refugee status “where the adverse effects of climate change interact with armed conflict and violence” – though, in that scenario, it would be the violence that granted them the status, not the climate change. Which is why they conclude:
So according to the UN agency which specifically deals with refugees and asylum seekers, there is no such thing as a “climate refugee.” Weather-related displacement doesn’t qualify you for refugee status. By definition, nobody coming to Ireland is claiming asylum on that basis, because it isn’t an internationally-recognised criteria.
One also has to wonder if perhaps Ireland’s surge in migration has anything to do with us offering the world free own door accommodation after 3 months, along with visas and amnesty for the so-called “undocumented” (i.e. illegals).
Asylum seekers would be given own-door accommodation after three months under 'ambitious' direct provision proposal https://t.co/5Ez4Wf7HHG pic.twitter.com/DcypDLVSNY
— Irish Independent (@Independent_ie) October 21, 2020
I’m sure the promise of free houses, which we advertised overseas in different languages for months, had absolutely nothing to do with it, and the surge is instead all down to cow farts. That’s clearly the more plausible explanation, right?
https://twitter.com/Ben_Scallan/status/1600936130652049408
At this point it also has to be pointed out that, according to the UN, the number of weather and climate-related deaths is down threefold globally over the last 50 years. Less people are dying of climate-related causes today, like hurricanes and tsunamis, than ever before.
Before any environmentalist readers start going mental in the comments screaming about “climate denial”: I’m not even arguing whether or not climate change is real, or whether it’s as bad as activists say, or anything like that. Even if you’re a card-carrying Green Party member, who takes every word of this stuff one hundred percent at face value, even then, climate deaths are objectively down.
We can argue about why that might be, such as the usage of better early warning systems, and so on. But we can’t argue that it’s the reality. And while there are supposedly more natural disasters now than there were before, even the World Meteorological Organisation concedes that at least part of this is due to better reporting in recent years. As this National Geographic article explains:
So objectively, no matter what you think of climate change, weather-related disasters certainly pose less danger to people today than they did in previous decades. That’s not a partisan talking point or opinion – it’s actually just a demonstrable fact.
So with this in mind, why would Europe and Ireland be experiencing a surge in asylum claims now due to climate change, when the danger levels posed by weather and climate disasters is lower than ever? It literally doesn’t make sense on any level, no matter what your beliefs are.
At this point, someone will likely say “Aha! But deaths are not the only criteria that would cause someone to flee their home. What about property damage? You could survive a disaster personally, but be forced to leave your country because your home is destroyed.”
But this claim is “not based in science.” And that’s not according to me – that’s according to François Gemenney, lead author of the holy and unimpeachable Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
He went on to explain that while he believed environmental factors played a role in displacement of people, it can be difficult to separate this from economic factors. Basically, he explained that there are too many complex variables to definitively say “This person is fleeing for this single reason,” and it’s disingenuous to oversimplify an issue down to a single facet of a wide-ranging issue.
Ultimately, Murphy’s comment is a ridiculous statement, from a politician who will apparently stop at nothing to blame anything and everything on climate change, from the mildest inconvenience, right up to the biggest disaster.
I wouldn’t be surprised if stubbing one’s toe on the sofa corner was due to climate change in Murphy’s mind, along with overcrowding on Dublin bus, and male pattern baldness. By hook or by crook, this lad will find a way to shoehorn the agenda into any conversation. It truly is his superpower. He’s like a rejected X-Men character.
I can just imagine a therapist’s first question now: “So Paul, this climate change…is it in the room with us right now?”