The future demographic picture of the world is billions of climate refugees storming across borders to seek water and to find shelter from the searing heat and deadly drought conditions.
Climate change deniers like U.S. President Donald Trump will have wealth and power to live in secure walled, gated communities with an army of guards to keep the refugees out.
Actually that wall along the U.S.-Mexico border begins to look very sensible given the fact that millions upon millions of refugees from Latin America might seek safety in the United States as climate conditions in their own countries goes from bad to worse to life threatening.
Drought could kill off all the livestock and destroy crops. Famine is a very real risk. The heat will prove devastating to poor everywhere, many succumbing to heat related illness and death. The elderly and the very young will be at greatest risk.
And there's the plutocratic Trump telling everyone that climate change is no threat, that it's "fake science." What an evil man he truly is. Sorry, but he is.
I look upon the threat of global warming much as the Jews in Europe looked upon the rise of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Denial will end in tragedy for millions upon millions of human beings and the Earth itself.
Climate change denial should be considered a crime. It's much worse than denying that smoking tobacco is linked to cancer and other deadly diseases. Smoking is an individual act and smokers are stupid or suffer from addictive personality disorder by nature.
The industrialized world is collectively responsible for global warming, but it's the third world that will suffer the most in the first stages of global climate collapse. Wars could be triggered by climate change when countries begin to fight over dwindling water supplies or good farmland. Oh well, a merry Christmas to all the Trump klan.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.