If, as was announced today, the government starts picking up the pace about deporting "illegal" immigrants faster, then there is likely to be a problem for the government, with probable knock-on effects for citizens and immigrants alike.

On the assumption that as climate change continues an increasing number of persons, typically in third world regions, are going to bear the consequences, and will become environmental refugees, a longer term and more humanitarian strategy needs to be developed. Interning and deporting illegal immigrants is not only inhumane, but in many cases, may be a failure of the government themselves to face up to the consequences of many of their own policies. Whether one blames the government for having made policy that primarily and significantly facilitates the growth and concentration of capital and prestige in the hands of an elite minority as contributing now to the problems said to have triggered climatic chaos, or whether one considers that the long history of colonial Britain effectively led to the wiping out of the resilience of some previous colonies to withstand such changes associated with climate change, Britain - like other western and industrialised nations generally - has benefited, to whatever extent, through the subjugation of the third world. This is through crippling debt, colonial razing, exported toxic waste, globalism and transnational corporate expansion, and also for emitting the greater portion of GHGs which will impact on all.

We, in Britain, have the national wealth to prepare and strategise to boost the resilience of the country to withstand and adapt to the changes anticipated in the years to come. The same cannot be said for the many third world nations ... and, as outlined above, first world nations, and Britain included, have much to answer for that incapacity. For the government to respond to this burgeoning humanitarian crisis with the knee-jerk reaction of faster deportations and internment camps is not a solution, far less one that is sustainable.

An alternative strategy (or set of) has to be developed. It has the unenviable task of balance accountability with the pragmatics of overpopulation and reduced physical and economic carrying capacity and possible food production problems. We can anticipate that it is going to get a lot worse, so the strategy needs to be adaptable. We are also going to be facing some very difficult choices, which tend not to be talked about very readily. It is no surprise to find documents such as  http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/3566_AbruptClimateChange.pdf appearing, in which the national and global security scenarios are reviewed in a world of depleting resources (and as we have already seen, shifts in the recent East/West political balance) and climatic change with untold impacts upon the geology and economic modus vivendi.

No longer is it such a terrible thing to be echoing Malthus' arguments. No longer can we negatively judge the Chinese for their childbirth policies. And yet, the necessity of the world we face is a real life conundrum of the dilemma ethics students face about who, out of a given group, gets saved, who doesn't and why.

It is only going to get worse for our children, in all likelihood. Decisions taken and rationalisations made today will have long legs into the future. The government, and we ourselves, need to grapple with this issue, bravely and quickly.