Where will they (we) go?

Throughout history overpopulation, drought, famine and economic transition resulted in mass migrations. Migrations swamped the Roman Empire, the greatest the world has known. When British landowners ejected the Scottish crofters from their farms in a great land consolidation movement, many of the crofters migrated to the United States and Canada. The rise of the industrial United States drew displaced workers and impoverished farmers from across Europe. When the potato famine threatened national starvation in Ireland, victims also made their way west across the Atlantic Ocean.

Over the past five centuries, the new worlds found in the Age of Discovery provided an avenue of escape and hope. But the new worlds now have been widely exploited from Canada to Tierra del Fuego, from North America to Australia. Where will the millions displaced by the transition to the information age or global climate change or environmental degradation go? Where are the new frontiers they will seek? Or will their struggle for survival force the choice to displace less strong populations in neighboring countries as the world grows hotter, more crowded and more polluted?