A US environmental group reports that of the 370,000 residents who have yet to return to coastal Louisiana post Katrina at least 250,000 of them have established homes elsewhere and will not return. Lester Brown, the director of the Earth Policy Institute stated “They no longer want to face the personal trauma and financial risks associated with rising seas and destructive storms. These evacuees are now climate refugees.

“Those of us who track the effects of global warming had assumed that the first large flow of climate refugees would be in the South Pacific with the abandonment of Tuvalu or other low-lying islands. We were wrong.”