Temperatures are rising year after year; and unfortunately, everyone is in a deep slumber. The world needs a shock to retract from its self-satisfaction regarding the rising temperature of our planet and the unexpected impacts that will follow.

Approximately 22 million people are displaced each year due to weather-related events. By 2050, projections indicate that 1.2 billion people will join the ranks of climate migrants, most of them from countries less capable of dealing with the repercussions of global warming. Not all will escape from a fire or flood. The climate crisis is not about a single climatic event. It is war, it is poverty, it is extremism, it is the disappearance of places where families have lived for generations, and it is the geopolitical and security ramifications of collapsed livelihoods. The result is a movement bluntly summarized as a "refugee crisis" - a description that makes the ongoing wave of displacement seem like a strange, temporary phenomenon that will recede, or can be isolated in other countries, only if barriers are raised high enough.

However, those displaced by the climate crisis rarely escape from a temporary weather-related event - but from the complex and permanent repercussions of these events. In the Sahel region, reduced rainfall in Cameroon led cattle herders to compete for water resources with fishing communities, leading to armed conflict that immediately sent thousands of people across the border into Chad, eventually creating a stream of migrants making their way north to the Mediterranean and its dangers.

In Micronesia, fresh water supplies and fish are dwindling with rising sea levels, intensifying storms, salinization of agricultural land, and beach erosion. The result is the destruction of entire communities and increased migration to the United States. Across rural areas in Iraq and Syria, members of faltering agricultural communities have replaced "backhoes with assault rifles" after drought, cold spells, and unseasonal heat made them easy targets for recruitment by the Islamic State.

These calamities seem distant and unrelated to anything that could happen in the developed world. What we witness as strange climate events and irregular temperature fluctuations, like New York experiencing a few days under an orange smoke cloud, are less alarming than they should be because they seem temporary and, ultimately, absorbable. They occur in relatively wealthy urban economies with strong physical and financial infrastructure, capable of mitigating mass movement of people, and providing food and water during crises; but for a short time, these events linked to the climate crisis should serve as a window into a more dangerous scenario, where slow and small changes accumulate until a sudden and devastating impact permanently forces you out of your home and reshapes your ability to earn a living.