The refugee crisis across the Middle East and northern Africa is largely driven by climate change turning millions of square miles of farmland into desert and spiking food prices - this led to a young man in Tunisia setting himself on fire, kicking off the so-called "Arab Spring."

Autocrats in the region like Assad in Syria reacted to the refugee crisis with brutality, but then we responded to their response by bombing their countries back to the stone age. Saudi Arabia is now doing this - with our help - in Yemen, killing tens of thousands with a vicious bombing campaign and throwing millions into famine. Now, the US Senate says "No - this is not the right response; we need to stop supporting Saudi Arabia in their brutal war in Yemen." The worldwide climate refugee crisis has just begin in a big way in the past two decades - and is about to get far, far worse.

We have to, as a nation and a world, come up NOW with a way to respond to this coming wave of desperate humanity that doesn't involve radicalizing them or dropping bombs on them and their children. This is going to be one of the biggest challenges of the next few decades as climate change reshapes our world.

-Thom