What makes people migrate? How does climate change drive mass migration in today’s world? How serious is this problem? How serious will it become in the future? To answer these questions, Pedro Pinto interviews Abrahm Lustgarten in this episode of “It’s Not That Simple”, a podcast by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation.

An author and investigative reporter, Abrahm Lustgarten’s work for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine has been focused on climate change and our response to a rapidly changing environment. His recent investigations include a three-part series on global climate migration, an examination of the global palm oil trade, the climate drivers behind pandemics, and how climate change is driving global water scarcity. His 2015 series examining the causes of water scarcity in the American West, “Killing the Colorado,” was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and received the top honor from the National Academy of Sciences. 

His earlier investigation into the environmental and economic consequences of fracking received the George Polk award for environmental reporting, the National Press Foundation award for best energy writing, a Sigma Delta Chi award and was honored as finalist for the Goldsmith Prize. He is also a 2022 Emerson Collective Fellow at New America, and a recipient of grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to supporting his forthcoming book about climate-driven migration. He teaches a course on narrative writing about climate change at the University of California, Berkeley.

In this episode, Lustgarten discusses how climate change can impact social issues which in turn can impact political circumstances and drive to mass migration events. He looks at the growing number of areas of the planet that are or are likely to become uninhabitable and considers the political impact of being a destination of mass migration. He also examines why climate change is something that can be hard for people to fully understand or accept. Finally, he discusses what we can and have to do to mitigate climate change and its consequences, in a conversation well worth listening to. 

More on this topic

• China’s Great Train: Beijing's Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet, Abrahm Lustgarten, 2008

• Run to Failure: BP and the Making of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, Abrahm Lustgarten, 2012

• Abrahm Lustgarten’s award-winning story on “The Water Crisis in the West”

https://www.propublica.org/series/killing-the-colorado

• Abrahm Lustgarten’s ProPublica stories

https://www.propublica.org/people/abrahm-lustgarten 

• A series of stories by Abrahm Lustgarten published in The New York Times Magazine

https://www.newamerica.org/our-people/abrahm-lustgarten/

• Abrahm Lustgarten on “The Great Climate Migration”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ6QoCDcEzg

• Abrahm Lustgarten on how “The Great Climate Migration Has Begun”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvaI9nxSKAw

• Podcast It’s Not That Simple “Climate Change”, with Bill McKibben

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDIIzdst6Fo

Other references in Portuguese

• Essay of the Foundation “Alterações Climáticas” by Filipe Duarte Santos

https://www.ffms.pt/publicacoes/detalhe/5409/alteracoes-climaticas

• Essay of the Foundation “Riscos Globais e Biodiversidade” by Maria Amélia Martins-Loução

https://www.ffms.pt/publicacoes/detalhe/5682/riscos-globais-e-biodiversidade

• Podcast [IN] Pertinente “Alterações Climáticas: Ainda vamos a tempo?” with Johan Rockström

https://www.ffms.pt/conferencias/detalhe/5799/alteracoes-climaticas-ainda-vamos-a-tempo-uma-entrevista-a-johan-rockstrom

• Podcast Da Capa à Contracapa “Como responder aos desafios das alterações climáticas?” with  Filipe Duarte Santos