I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Monday, November 8th.

As the COP26 Climate Summit is now in its second and final week, we'll get a very informed view of how it's going

now, but also take a step back. Think about this. What is the relationship between global warming

and the atmosphere and the effect on human beings? Well, one very basic answer to that question is

that it changes where on earth is habitable or uninhabitable, right?

If you could live in a place along the ocean before, but sea level rise is making that place

uninhabitable now, people have to move. If a country in the global south was hot and dry but

was cool enough and had enough moisture for agriculture,

and now it's not, people have to move. So climate change causes migration, more migration than there

would have been without it. It also can cause armed conflict, war, where large enough groups of

desperate enough people have to compete or move for food.

And when any of these developments affect large populations of poor people, the result is many

refugees, climate refugees. It's already happening to a tragic degree and will only get worse if meetings like COP 26 fail to

prevent it. So with me now is David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue

Committee, which helps to resettle and advocate for the world's refugees. And as some of you know,

he was previously the foreign minister of the UK, so he knows many of

these government leaders at COP26 and knows how these things work and don't. David, it's always

great and important when you come on the show. Welcome back to WNYC. Thank you so much, Brian,

for having me on. And you've basically said it all. You've done a, you've said in 45 seconds

what we're going to cover in half an hour, but it's great to be talking to you. I look forward

to exploring issues. So you agree with the premise of my intro that climate change is already

causing an increase in the number of the world's refugees. It may not be the first thing that many

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