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The ecological case for remigration...
There are a lot of supposed ‘right wing’ arguments for remigration. Most you’ll have heard a dozen or more times, more available housing meaning cheaper prices, fewer users of NHS services so a sped up practice of helping patients, more school places and funding per head of child so better facilities, fewer drones so better paid low skill jobs etc etc etc
But there’s a huge argument that isn’t often spoken of. And it’s basically a cudgel to find out who are actual and who are faux environmentalists.
- Increased carbon footprint living in western society
The UK has significantly reduced its per capita CO₂ emissions over the years, which is now about 4.5 metric tons per person. This decrease is due to shifts towards renewable energies, improvements in energy efficiency appliances and deindustrialization. Although for some reason not nuclear even though we’re an island with basically zero natural disasters…
However, when considering consumption-based emissions, which account for imports and exports, the UK's carbon footprint is actually higher, with estimates indicating around 10 tonnes CO2 per person annually. This reflects the impact of the UK's consumption of goods produced elsewhere, which are not included in territorial emissions, a sneaky little grift avoiding the bean counters.
When you look at the per capita CO₂ Emissions in countries where migration to the UK is high though. Take for example Somalia, they are extremely low, with figures around 0.1 tonnes per capita annually. This is because the country has minimal industrial activity, low energy consumption, and a reliance on traditional, often non-fossil fuel sources like biomass for energy. Somalia's emissions primarily come from agriculture, with a minimal contribution from industrial processes or transportation.
It doesn’t take an ecologist or environmental scientist to see where this is going. Every Somalian you import into the UK drastically increases their carbon footprint. No one who’s interested in the deindustrialisation of the UK for the purposes of environmental sustainability can make the argument that bringing more people into a higher carbon environment is going to reduce our carbon output. Especially when vast swathes of our output is energy, is necessary to keep us warm on a damp cold island.
- Fewer required housing developments
Another important ecological factor is that back in 1990, the United Kingdom had approximately 22.2 million dwellings. This figure represents the total housing stock across the UK during that year, encompassing various types of homes including houses, flats, and bungalows, whether owned, rented, or vacant. The UK at this time had approximately 57 million people. A more than reasonable figure for the size of land occupied.
As of 2024, the UK had approximately 29.9 million dwellings. For 69.14 million people. The population explosion in just 30 years however hasn’t come from births.
Considering the births vs deaths ratios the NET figure of births is 436,700 total from 1990 to 2024. We needed only around 1m homes in that time to stick to the ratio of homes to buyers back when the average price was £57k
This quickly shows that there wasn’t any real demand for an extra 7.7 million homes to house a massively expanded population.
If we then compare this to the previous idea that many who come to the UK are coming from low carbon footprint areas you’re looking at potentially 12.14 million people who could have doubled, tripled or even more substantially increased their carbon footprint massively offsetting any of the things individuals and businesses have tried to do to reduce carbon emissions over the last few decades.
- Less traffic meaning efficient travel and smaller carbon footprints
Mass migration has directly led to more vehicles on UK roads. With a growing population, we see a surge in traffic, especially in urban centers like London. This growth in population due to migration accounts for over 15% of the forecast traffic increase in England. The UK's road infrastructure, already congested, struggles to keep up with this influx. The result? More traffic jams, longer commutes, and increased road maintenance issues. More cars mean higher emissions. While not exclusively due to migration, the environmental impact is clear with worsening air quality in urban areas.
Fewer people however means fewer journeys of both the necessary and unnecessary kinds. All of us who drive remember how much more efficient we were during the COVID lockdowns where the roads were empty. Although not to the same level, mass remigration could hugely ease congestion in much the same way.
Fewer vehicles on the road means fewer accidents, fewer road repairs, smaller levels of carbon output and cleaner air. Not just for the environment but also for ourselves.
- Revival of low impact farming would be possible with fewer mouths to feed
Fewer people means less urban expansion into rural areas. This frees up more land for things like regenerative agriculture and rewinding. Rather than putting that burden onto farmers themselves in their own fields they use to grow our food, we can instead use brownfield sites that would otherwise be used to build new homes, to instead, renew and rewild local areas and bring back wildlife.
Fewer people would also reduce demand for high yield industrial farming cutting waste and again reducing the carbon from intensive agriculture and the damage it does to the living soil. It would also reduce the requirement of overall emissions from food imports and the transport and housing of said materials.
With fewer people to feed there may also be more political will to prioritise local and organic food production over imports. With projects around the world showing that with the right equipments and conditions, pretty much all foods can be grown anywhere on the planet.
- Reduction of plastic and waste products from consumption
Overall consumption would hugely reduce under the conditions of remigration too. Fewer people buying packaged goods and fast food means less plastic in food, retail and household items. Single use plastics would likely stop being financially competitive with reusable items. Think back to your grandparents days, maybe even great grandparents for some of you. Reusable glass milk bottles that were returned on consumption. Think how many single use plastic milk bottles over one individuals lifetime could be saved from that one change.
Another huge reduction would be public waste generation. Urban areas with high population densities generate huge amounts of plastic waste. A shrinking population could mean less litter, fewer landfills, lower recycling burdens and less pressure on recycling infrastructure in general.
If the population declined by say 10-15% which is around about the number of migrants to population in the last 15 years. We could save 780,000 tonnes of single waste plastic alone.
- All things considered
The argument to allow migration be it illegal, legal economic or even students coming to study. Each one presents a big problem to our overall environment and very likely increases their own and our collective carbon footprint. So if you wanted the tl;dr on this. Mass migrations bad for the environment.
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