The Falepili Union, an agreement letting Tuvaluans escape the impacts of climate change and move to Australia, came into effect last month.
The program is expected to start in nine months and will allow up to 280 people to migrate each year through a random ballot.
Really? The entire population Tuvalu is like 11,000 people. Even if they all showed up at once, Australia’s (population ~27 million) demographics wouldn’t even fucking notice. Hell, they could all move to the same neighborhood in a city like Sydney or Melbourne and even people in the rest of the city would barely notice! What the fuck even is the point of bothering with limited quotas?!
Second:
“It’s a sad situation because we Tuvaluans contribute less to the cause of climate change but we are the ones suffering,” she says.
It is singularly infuriating that even while Tuvaluans take responsibility for their “contribution” to climate change – even though with <$6000 GDP per capita and a whopping 5 miles of paved roads it’s honestly fucking negligible – most Americans and other rich westerners still won’t make any acknowledgement at all of their own. This is Oliver Twist “please sir I want some more” levels of wretched groveling, and our reaction to it is goddamned appalling!