Rethinking “Greening of Hate”: Climate Emissions, Immigration, and the Last Frontier

There has been a recent resurgence of what Betsy Hartmann dubbed “the greening of hate” (blaming immigrants for environmental issues in the US). When immigrants move to the U.S., the argument goes, their CO₂ emissions increase, thereby making climate change worse. Using migration from the Lower 48 to Alaska as a model, I illustrate how this anti-immigration argument has more traction than it is generally given credit for, and might be more convincing in a different situation. Nonetheless, it is not convincing given the current pattern of climate emissions and prevailing justice considerations. Climate matters; how we treat each other matters, too.