Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security

Description

RECIPIENT OF THE 2018 IZZY AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM "Every so often a book comes along that can dramatically change, or elevate, one's thinking about a global problem. Much like Naomi Klein's books, Todd Miller's Storming the Wall is such a book and deserves far more attention and discussion."-Izzy Award Judges, Ithaca College *** "A galvanizing forecast of global warming's endgame and a powerful indictment of America's current stance."-Kirkus Reviews As global warming accelerates, droughts last longer, floods rise higher, and super-storms become more frequent. With increasing numbers of people on the move as a result, the business of containing them-border fortification-is booming. In Storming the Wall, Todd Miller travels around the world to connect the dots between climate-ravaged communities, the corporations cashing in on border militarization, and emerging movements for environmental justice and sustainability. Reporting from the flashpoints of climate clashes, and from likely sites of futures battles, Miller chronicles a growing system of militarized divisions between the rich and the poor, the environmentally secure and the environmentally exposed. Stories of crisis, greed and violence are juxtaposed with powerful examples of solidarity and hope in this urgent and timely message from the frontlines of the post-Paris Agreement era. Todd Miller's writings about the border have appeared in the New York Times, Tom Dispatch, and many other places. Praise for Storming the Wall "Nothing will test human institutions like climate change in this century-as this book makes crystal clear, people on the move from rising waters, spreading deserts, and endless storms could profoundly destabilize our civilizations unless we seize the chance to re-imagine our relationships to each other. This is no drill, but it is a test, and it will be graded pass-fail"-Bill McKibben, author Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet "As Todd Miller shows in this important and harrowing book, climate-driven migration is set to become one of the defining issues of our time.... This is a must-read book."-Christian Parenti, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, author of Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence "Todd Miller reports from the cracks in the walls of the global climate security state-militarized zones designed to keep powerful elites safe from poor and uprooted peoples.... Miller finds hope-hope that may not survive in Trumpworld."-Molly Molloy, Research librarian for Latin America and the border at New Mexico State University and creator of "Frontera List" "Miller delivers a prescient and sober view of our increasingly dystopian planet as the impacts of human-caused climate disruption continue to intensify."-Dahr Jamail, award-winning independent journalist, author of The End of Ice "Todd Miller's important book chronicles how existing disparities in wealth and power, combined with the dramatic changes we are causing in this planet's ecosystems, mean either we come together around our common humanity or forfeit the right to call ourselves fully human."-Robert Jensen, author of The End of Patriarchy, Plain Radical, and Arguing for Our Lives

For the past fifteen years Todd Miller has researched, written about, and worked on immigration and border issues from both sides of the U.S. Mexico divide for organizations such as BorderLinks, Witness for Peace, and NACLA. He did the brunt of this work in Tucson, Arizona and Oaxaca, Mexico, with stints in New York City sprinkled in. Between Tucson and the Buffalo/Niagara Falls region of New York state where he grew up, he has spent the majority of his life close to the U.S. international boundary, south and north. He is the author of Border Patrol Nation (City Lights, 2014), and his writings about the border have appeared in the New York Times, TomDispatch, Mother Jones, The Nation, Al Jazeera English, and Salon among other places.

RECIPIENT OF THE 2018 IZZY AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM "Every so often a book comes along that can dramatically change, or elevate, one's thinking about a global problem. Much like Naomi Klein's books, Todd Miller's Storming the Wall is such a book and deserves far more attention and discussion."-Izzy Award Judges, Ithaca College Named one of the "15 Books on Climate Change That Are Essential Reading" - Esquire "A well-researched and grim exploration of the connections between climate change and the political hostility toward the refugees it creates. Journalist and activist Miller expands on his earlier focus on U.S.-Mexico border controversies with an alarming catalog of climatological effects on population movements, surveillance, violence, and other current issues. ... A galvanizing forecast of global warming's endgame and a powerful indictment of America's current stance."-Kirkus Reviews "In this prescient book, Miller travels the globe to document the large swaths of people displaced from their communities by climate catastrophe, resulting in an emerging wave of climate refugees. Miller makes a potent connection between climate displacement and border militarization, drawing on intensive research and statements from military officials to illuminate Homeland Security's efforts to criminalize climate asylum seekers. By 2050, World Bank estimates that over one billion people will become climate refugees; unless our policymakers change course, those refugees will be pitted against the cruel, racist, and lucrative surveillance states portrayed with such cutting clarity in Storming the Wall."-Esquire "Storming the Wall is a highly personal, narrative-driven book. ... Miller's book brings the dilemmas of climate migrants and refugees out of the realm of policy makers and academics, painting a vivid picture of an increasingly stratified, fortified world. Climate change, often discussed in terms of degrees of temperature change and inches of sea-level rise, can often be hard to understand on an emotional level. Miller portrays the front lines of the issue in human terms: a young child on a low-lying island in the Philippines, a Honduran farmer whose crops have withered in a prolonged drought. Miller leads the reader through his own personal process of connecting the dots between militarization and climate change. ... strikes the rare balance of alerting his readers to the threat without paralyzing them with fear."-Martha Pskowski, Los Angeles Review of Books "In the news, there had been little attempt to explain why farmers from Guatemala and Honduras-two 'dry corridor' countries wracked by consecutive years of drought-were trekking to the United States. Miller's book was a welcome antidote. ... "-London Review of Books "Nothing will test human institutions like climate change in this century-as this book makes crystal clear, people on the move from rising waters, spreading deserts, and endless storms could profoundly destabilize our civilizations unless we seize the chance to reimagine our relationships to each other. This is no drill, but it is a test, and it will be graded pass-fail"-Bill McKibben, author Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet "As Todd Miller shows in this important and harrowing book, climate-driven migration is set to become one of the defining issues of our time. We are at a political crossroads: continue hardening under the steadily creeping politics of xenophobia and the repressive militarization of border and immigration policy, or change course and plan for a just adaption to a hotter world. At stake is not only the well-being of immigrants but also the integrity and feasibility of democratic government itself. This is a must-read book."-Christian Parenti, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, author of Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence "Todd Miller reports from the cracks in the walls of the global climate security state militarized zones designed to keep powerful elites safe from poor and uprooted peoples. Weapons of war shoot to kill refugees from rising seas, superstorms, no rain and no food. Hyped-up fears morph climate justice activists into terrorists; the security state targets any and all of the poor and powerless. Despite growing millions of climate refugees caught in the crosshairs of border enforcement regimes, Miller finds hope -hope that may not survive in Trumpworld."-Molly Molloy, Research librarian for Latin America and the border at New Mexico State University and creator of "Frontera List" "Storming the Wall is essential reading in our climate disrupted world. From conferences about the increasingly militarized security state, to front-line interviews with climate refugees, Miller delivers a prescient and sober view of our increasingly dystopian planet as the impacts of human-caused climate disruption continue to intensify."-Dahr Jamail, award-winning independent journalist, author of The End of Ice "Storming the Wall demonstrates why the struggles for social justice and ecological sustainability must be one struggle. Todd Miller's important book chronicles how existing disparities in wealth and power, combined with the dramatic changes we are causing in this planet's ecosystems, mean either we come together around our common humanity or forfeit the right to call ourselves fully human. If 'security' comes to mean only that the most privileged people on the planet can secure that privilege, then we are all, literally, doomed. Elites are planning how they will react to climate clashes. Miller explains why we have to as well."-Robert Jensen, University of Texas at Austin, author of The End of Patriarchy, Plain Radical, and Arguing for Our Lives "Governments across the world today are planning for climate change. The problem, as Todd Miller ably shows, is that they're not planning mitigation, but militarization. Storming the Wall offers a dire report from what are literally the front lines of global warming: the razor-wired security zones and drone-patrolled borderlands where the Anthropocene's first human victims-climate refugees-are dying in droves."-Roy Scranton, author of Learning to Die in the Anthropocene "Todd Miller takes us straight to the front-lines of our world transformed by climate change to the tension points where those of us more protected from its disruptive impacts encounter those who are most vulnerable to them. Here is the largely untold back story to the thousands of people turning up on our borders, and challenging the very idea of those frontiers in the process."-Mark Schapiro, author of The End of Stationarity: Searching for the New Normal in the Age of Carbon Shock "In Todd Miller's prescient new book, Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security, the Tucson journalist and author travels the globe to document how climate disasters are uprooting people from their homes. Miller visits the Philippines in the wake of 2013's devastating Typhoon Haiyan, as well as Central America and other global hot spots, documenting a rapidly changing world of rising sea levels, melting ice caps and border walls guarded by machine gun-toting men. He walks on a pilgrimage with climate activists to the United Nations' climate summit in Paris, where a former Filipino negotiator turned activist tells Miller a grassroots movement is the only solution to push wealthier nations to act: 'Solidarity is not an alternative, it is not an option, it is our only chance.'"-Texas Observer