Bloomberg View has an article about a small group of Choctaws on a Louisiana island slowly sinking into the Gulf. They are to be moved to higher ground. Fine, it's an okay story.
However, the Bloomberg headline writer - a historical ignoramus - labeled it The First U.S. Climate Refugees. Whatever happened to truth in labeling?
Were not the Okies of the Depression era Dust Bowl climate refugees? Aren't the people who leave the Rust Belt to retire in the sun climate refugees? Can't you argue the whole tribe of migrate-twice-a-year "snow bird" retirees are climate refugees?
I daresay my father and his family were climate refugees when they moved to Southern California from Illinois over a century ago. L.A. was lovely in those years, I've seen the pix, heard the stories.
Bottom line: climate refugee is nothing new, here or elsewhere. Folks have been movin' on in hopes of a better life practically forever, likely since the hike out of Africa by protohumans.
