Here's Everything We Know About The New Tesla Model X

FREMONT, Calif. -- Amid great fanfare and expectations, Tesla Motors unveiled the Model X, its all-electric SUV, at an event Tuesday night at its Bay Area factory. 

The Model X is the second car available for sale from the electric automaker, which introduced the Model S sedan three years ago. The high-speed Roadster, its first car, was discontinued in 2012.

The all-wheel-drive, seven-passenger X could help Tesla crack into the SUV market. The vehicles experienced a surge in sales over the past year and are popular with female drivers. 

Shoppers can put down $5,000 on Tesla's website to reserve an X when they start rolling out. The base price actually runs up to $132,000 for the Signature Series, which includes add-ons like an autopilot mode and heated steering wheel and seats. 

A less expensive version, the $35,000 Model 3 sedan, is expected to come out in 2017. 

The X boasts a lot of power. It goes from o to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds, and has a range of about 250 miles before the battery needs a recharge.  

Plus, it's stylish. A new feature, the "falcon wing doors," swoop out and up. (It's easy to picture "Silicon Valley" character Russ Hanneman approving of the design.) There are three rows of seats, but the second row holds just two passengers.

The X features a windshield that extends above the driver's head, offering panoramic views and the feel of a helicopter cockpit, Musk said.

Most importantly, though, Musk said that the Model X is safe.

"We've made the safest SUV ever," he said. Sensors can automatically apply the brakes or steer away from cars and dangerous objects, he said during the debut, which was webcast from Tesla's Fremont, California, factory. "There's really nothing that's more important" than safety.

Eyes might be fixed on those back seats, because CEO Elon Musk said in August that they had become a problem during production.  

Tesla experienced success in the luxury market with the Model S, which was the second-highest selling luxury model last year. With the Model X, Tesla is introducing an electric SUV at least a few years before competitors like Mercedes, Porsche and General Motors crack into the field. 

For now, Tesla is niche player. It is forecast to sell almost 29,000 cars this year, according to LMC Automotive. Ford, in contrast, is predicted to move almost 2.5 million vehicles. Analysts see the Model X as a step toward somewhat wider appeal. 

 

“Tesla wants to be a mainstream automaker,” said Doug Gilman, an industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan. “To be a competitive automaker you have to have a whole host of vehicles. You can’t just have one super.”

An SUVs safety and size might attract female drivers with families, analysts said. If the X outsells the S, experts will probably deem the new line a success. 

“The big potential for the Model X is that it’s going to open up a whole new market that they had to fight a little harder for with the Model S. That’s the female market,” said Karl Brauer, a senior director at Kelley Blue Book. “There’s a huge market out there.”

The Fremont factory looked more like a nightclub on Tuesday night as thousands of attendees who had paid at least $5,000 to reserve a Model X sipped wine while listening to remixed versions of hits from Dolly Parton and the Rolling Stones.

Though attendees had yet to see the Model X in person, some people said they had faith in Tesla based on the quality of the Model S.

"I love my Range Rover, but I can't stand going to the gas station," Dana Cappiello, 55, a realtor from San Francisco, told The Huffington Post."It was as simple as that." 

She was peeved by the late start. CEO Elon Musk took the stage in a dark jacket and jeans just before 9 p.m. PST, nearly an hour behind schedule.

The audience erupted with laughter as he touted the environmental benefits of his all-electric vehicles while alluding to Volkswagen's ongoing scandal over software that helped its cars outrageously cheat on diesel emissions tests. Volkswagen is the biggest automaker in the world by sales.

"We designed this car well before recent events," Musk said.

Long lines formed for test rides in the factory parking lot after the presentation ended. 

For the company to become profitable, Tesla needs to increase sales by hundreds of thousands of cars per year, according to John Humphrey, a senior vice president at J.D. Power and Associates. 

“These customers are evangelical about the brand,” Humphrey said. “Going downmarket and not losing the allure of the brand is the challenge. Each rung you go down, you lose a little shine on it.”

Tesla stock was up nearly 2 percent in pre-market trading on Wednesday morning. 

This story has been updated to include additional comments from analysts.

A previous version of this article stated that the Model X is Tesla's second car. It's actually the second model currently available, because the company had discontinued the Roadster in 2012.

Technology Might Kill The Idea Of Car Ownership -- And That's A Good Thing

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The American dream used to mean a good job, house in the suburbs and two-car garage.  But for kids born in the 21st century, a very different reality awaits: More people will live in big cities, vehicles will drive themselves and car-sharing, not car-ownership, will be the norm.

If everything goes according to plan, anyway.

A new report released Monday by the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment declares that transportation is at a tipping point. "Megacities" such as London, Shanghai and New York City are already glutted with automobiles, but car ownership could double worldwide by 2030 if something doesn't change. And something has to change: Cars already contribute an enormous amount of pollution to our atmosphere, and that pollution is a factor in millions of early deaths every single year. Forget the American dream: Solving this problem is a global imperative. 

Thankfully, we're en route.

"If you already have congestion and pollution, that's not going to get better if we continue to move in the same way," Stefan Knupfer, a senior partner at McKinsey, told The Huffington Post in a recent interview. "The good thing is, a lot of new technology trends are coming in."

Knupfer describes a basic problem: In the next couple of decades, many more people worldwide will enter the middle class, those people will want to buy cars and those cars will make cities more congested and polluted. In his mind, the solutions stem from four major pillars: car-sharing, autonomous driving, electrification and in-vehicle connectivity. Summed up, technology will make it less necessary to own a car because it'll be easier to get hooked up with someone else's ride (think Uber and Zipcar), and new vehicles will be "smarter" and less damaging to the environment. 

Cars already represent a lot of dead weight on this planet. They spend the vast majority of their time parked uselessly. The idea is to have fewer cars on the road and ones that are more efficient -- imagine a hybrid bus that can access real-time travel data to avoid traffic and pick up passengers on demand. What if you could own a car but have the ability to "Airbnb" it to a trusted stranger while you're at work? What if taxis were replaced by self-driving cars that could buzz around to anyone who needed them?

Of course, none of this means anything if the options aren't appealing to the average person. Some people will simply want to purchase and own cars. They're status symbols. But McKinsey's new urban mobility report illustrates how these advances might cost the average person less than financing a new or used vehicle of their own.

The firm used data from the U.S. National Household Travel Survey "to calculate the time and costs associated with walking, bicycling, driving, public transit, e-hailing, and car sharing, based on annual miles traveled." Then, it estimated how much money an individual would spend traveling around San Francisco every year. 

Take a look:

This is a little complicated but, bottom-line, the graph shows that a person in San Francisco traveling 5,000 miles each year would spend thousands of dollars less on transportation if they used alternate means -- any of those described above -- rather than driving a privately owned car, as long as they're willing to spend 30 percent more time traveling. (An individual who wouldn't accept spending more time in transit -- a "0 percent time premium" -- would still save money compared to financing a new car, though they'd spend slightly more than if they bought a used car for $15,000.)

What's really interesting is that red line. That represents the estimated cost to a person traveling around San Francisco who has access to driverless vehicles. Obviously these numbers are theoretical, but no matter the amount traveled -- 10,000 or 5,000 miles -- autonomous cars are predicted to drastically reduce the cost to the consumer annually in McKinsey's analysis.

Of course, McKinsey is careful to note that widespread adoption of driverless cars is still a ways off. 

"In aviation, for example, many planes could theoretically be operated without a pilot," the report reads. "The universal preference, however, has been to require pilots, so that human judgment is available. For similar reasons, and also because of legal issues related to liability, this might be the case with autonomous cars."

And other quirks could pop up when driverless cars hit the road. It's almost silly to say, but self-driving cars will only take up fewer resources if we use them responsibly.

"All of this can go in the wrong direction. If you have a car that drives itself, it can drive around instead of finding a parking space. It can shop while you work. That wouldn't be great," Knupfer told HuffPost.

In any case, a lot has to happen before these solutions can be implemented in a world-changing way. City dwellers can barely agree on bike lanes, let alone an entire system of robotic public transport vehicles specifically designed to upend the status quo. But much of this is happening organically.

"Cities have the opportunity to build something like this, but the reality is more that they emerge in large cities more than there being city planning and a process," Knupfer told HuffPost.

Think about it: No one planned for Uber, but here it is. Whether we continue to embrace changes like this -- changes that could make life better on this planet -- is up to us.

This article has been updated to include a link to McKinsey's report.

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Damon Beres covers consumer technology, video games and the many ways humans interact with their devices. He is based in New York. You can contact him at damon.beres@huffingtonpost.com or on Twitter: @dlberes.

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Elon Musk Says Climate Change Refugees Will Dwarf Current Crisis

Elon Musk, co-founder of electric carmaker Tesla Motors, warned on Thursday that climate change will spark a refugee crisis of catastrophic proportions if no action is taken.

In a speech in Berlin, the Tesla chief executive said Europe's current wave of people seeking asylum, prompted mostly by political violence, will be dwarfed as fresh water becomes scarce, food supplies become insecure and weather changes in the coming decades. 

"Today's refugee problem is perhaps a small indication of what the future will be like if we do not take action with respect to climate change," Musk told an audience at Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. "Today, the challenge is in terms of millions of people, but in the future, based on what the scientific consensus is, the problem will be in the hundreds of millions and much more severe."

Volkswagen's ongoing scandal over cheating on nitrogen oxide emissions tests on its diesel vehicles is a troubling, Musk said, but it's a small issue compared with the problem of overall carbon dioxide emissions.

The billionaire has devoted much of his career to reducing the use of fossil fuels. Besides running an electric car company, he serves as the chairman of SolarCity, a solar panel manufacturer. Earlier this year, both missions merged, when Tesla announced a battery pack that would allow buildings to store excess solar energy generated throughout the day for use at night.

"I think it's very important that we take action today to recognize that we are making a very significant change to the chemical constituency of the atmosphere and oceans," Musk said. "One that is almost impossible to reverse."

Climate change remains a contentious issue in the United States as some lobby groups, often acting on behalf of companies that benefit from the carbon economy, sow doubt with the scientific consensus of humankind's role in warming the planet. But in Germany, a country Musk called "the best in the world when it comes to solar power," facts about the climate are much more widely accepted.

Still, Musk said even Germany has a long way to go. Despite the country's aggressive transition to renewable energy, a program called Energiewende, Germany remains dependent on vehicles fueled by gasoline and diesel. The scandal engulfing Volkswagen -- the world's largest automaker by sales and, until now, the pride of Germany manufacturing and exports -- only serves to highlight the problem. 

"If you go 20, 30, 50 years in the future, what do you say to your kids or your grandkids? It's almost, like, scientists have all said that these bad things are going to happen, it's, like 97 percent," Musk said. "So, to say to your kids or grandkids, like, 'Did nobody tell you?' No, everyone was telling us. 'So why didn't you do anything?' What's the answer? I think it's very important that we do something."

Watch the full speech below. Musk begins talking at 9:03:

Here's The Joke Of A Sustainability Report That VW Put Out Last Year

Now that we know Volkswagen purposefully rigged 11 million vehicles to circumvent environmental rules, releasing an enormous amount of pollutants into the atmosphere, the company’s Sustainability Report from 2014 comes off as a horrible joke.

"It's a jaw-dropper. So unbelievable," Linda Greer, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council told The Huffington Post.

In the report, which was reviewed by consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, the automaker details its commitment to the customer, its employees and, of course, to the environment. “Environment” is mentioned 335 times over 156-pages -- an average of twice per page. 

“The Volkswagen Group has a long tradition of resolute commitment to environmental protection.” -- page 86.

“We intend to put our creative powers to good use for the benefit of people and the environment." -- page 14.

As we now know, Volkswagen put its creative powers to use in a far less noble way, devising software to purposefully cheat on emissions tests and secretly installing it its diesel vehicles. On Wednesday, chief executive Martin Winterkorn was forced to quit his job at the world’s largest automaker in the wake of the growing scandal and in anticipation of billions in fines, lawsuits and increasing customer rage. More firings are on deck.

VW’s report follows a long tradition of companies using self-reported data -- sometimes certified by well-paid consulting firms -- to make broad declarations of ethical commitment, used to reassure the public that companies aren't just profit-seeking monsters. These are called “corporate social responsibility” reports, "CSR" is the biz lingo. This is a huge movement; most corporations produce these things. Here’s Coca-Cola’s. And Ikea’s. And Exxon-Mobil’s.

And, of course, not all of these efforts are mere publicity ploys. Some companies take this stuff very seriously, even tying environmental goals to executive pay -- an extremely sigficant matter. But in the wake of the VW scandal, it’s going to be harder for anyone to believe a word in these reports.

“[Volkswagen] will probably severely tarnish this entire movement,” writes Greer in a blog post. She’s written before about the key danger of CSR programs: that they end up as merely shiny promotional efforts that allow businesses to sidestep true responsibility for their endeavors.

"There are some companies doing good things," Greer told HuffPost. "Oftentimes they're just doing it and not necessarily putting it in a report."

Yet many efforts are sideshows. Companies give money to philanthropies, for example, but fail to examine the core parts of their businesses that need attention.

Volkswagen will probably severely tarnish this entire movement. Linda Greer, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Greer is working with Target now on cleaning up environmental issues in the retailer's supply chain. She also commends Apple for dealing with pollution issues overseas. "They have a CSR report, but I think they are walking the walk more than just talking the talk," she said of Apple.

VW’s absurd document follows a long tradition. BP is also notorious for the false promise of its environmental slogans. The oil company won plaudits for acknowledging the reality of global warming and for the slogan “Beyond Petroleum” back in 2000. Then, in 2010, BP caused one of the worst oil spills in history. 

By contrast, Exxon Mobil after the Exxon Valdez disaster became “religious about safety standards,” writes Chrystia Freeland for the Washington Post in 2010. Getting the oil out of the ground and moving it around the world without killing anyone or destroying the ocean is a core social responsibility.

So is adhering to environmental regulations, which VW brazenly decided to forgo.

Companies need to start with those simple goals before moving on to marketing materials.

CVS To Sell Overdose Reversal Drug Without A Prescription In 12 More States

At CVS pharmacies in 12 states, friends and family members of people suffering from opiate addiction will now be able to get the overdose reversal drug naloxone without a prescription, the company announced Wednesday. CVS has already similarly expanded access to naloxone in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, meaning CVS pharmacies in 14 states now allow nonprescription purchases of naloxone.

"Over 44,000 people die from accidental drug overdoses every year in the United States and most of those deaths are from opioids, including controlled substance pain medication and illegal drugs such as heroin," Tom Davis, vice president of pharmacy professional practices at CVS, said in a statement. "Naloxone is a safe and effective antidote to opioid overdoses and by providing access to this medication in our pharmacies without a prescription in more states, we can help save lives."

Wednesday's announcement will affect CVS pharmacies in Arkansas, California, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin. Pharmacy boards in these states had previously been empowered to make decisions about offering naloxone without a prescription.

"While all 7,800 CVS/pharmacy stores nationwide can continue to order and dispense naloxone when a prescription is presented, we support expanding naloxone availability without a prescription and are reviewing opportunities to do so in other states," Davis said.

Smaller independent pharmacies and some larger chains have also moved to increase nonprescription access to naloxone in some parts of the country, but this decision by CVS marks the most significant step forward so far. 

Naloxone, or Narcan, is nonaddictive, nontoxic and easy to administer through nasal or intravenous application. It reverses the effects of an opioid overdose by essentially blocking the opioid receptors that are targeted by heroin and many prescription painkillers.

From 1996 through June 2014 laypersons reported using naloxone in 26,463 overdose reversals, according to a June report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2013 alone, nearly 40,000 laypersons with 93 organizations reported 8,032 overdose reversals.

Some critics have claimed that wide access to naloxone could encourage risky drug use by giving users a way to "fix" an overdose. But while naloxone has been found to be highly effective -- capable of reducing overdose deaths in a community by as much as 50 percent when paired with proper training and distribution -- it doesn't come without a price. Administering it to an overdose victim can send them into a rapid and excruciating withdrawal, which supporters say makes it unlikely to enable abuse.

"The only thing naloxone does is reverse an opiate overdose," said Laura Thomas, California deputy director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "It's not a drug that people can get high on, it's not a drug that has any other repercussions or side effects, and increasingly people understand that we need to get naloxone into the hands of anyone who's likely to be at the scene of an overdose."

Amid surging opioid overdose deaths across the U.S., many states have taken action to expand access to naloxone. A number of states are now training and equipping first responders and other law enforcement officers. Others have passed laws protecting prescribers from criminal prosecution or civil liability. But some states have done nothing.

Still, naloxone advocates like Thomas say opposition to naloxone access has begun to evaporate over the last few years. 

Even politicians not known for their progressive views on drug policy are getting on board. Earlier this year, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) told The Huffington Post he believes the federal government should make the drug available over the counter nationwide.

"Right now, it’s hard to get," Burgess said. "If it were available at a 24-hour pharmacy, not saying it could save every life at risk, it could save some. The downside of having it available is what?"

Other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have also spoken out about naloxone, urging federal action to make the drug more easily available to the public. But for the Food and Drug Administration to consider such a broad step, a manufacturer would first have to apply to sell the drug without a prescription, an FDA spokesman told HuffPost in April.

As demand for naloxone rises with acceptance, so have prices. Over the past two years, Amphastar Pharmaceuticals, manufacturer of the popular intranasal form of the drug, has in some cases reportedly doubled the prices it charges. In Baltimore this year, for example, the cost of a single dose went from $20 to $40 in just five months, according to an NPR report. Some have blamed Amphastar for these increases, but the company has cited increased manufacturing and material costs.

Volkswagen Just Nuked The Public's Trust In Companies Trying To Save The Planet

The world’s largest automaker has just given more ammunition to those who don’t trust that businesses are serious about preventing runaway climate change.

How ironic that Volkswagen, which has publicly signed a pledge to be a leader in “consistent, positive business engagement with policymakers on climate issues,” should be caught by the Environmental Protection Agency for allegedly cheating on emission-control standards. 

Martin Winterkorn, Volkswagen's CEO, apologized on Sunday after the EPA accused the company of installing software in its diesel-powered vehicles specifically designed to allow the cars to evade regulators and emit 40 times the legal limit of nitrogen oxide. The chemical adds to the buildup of smog, which is tied to asthma and other respiratory illnesses; but its effects are different from compounds that directly cause warming of the atmosphere. 

In a statement, Winterkorn said that “I personally am deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and the public,” and ordered an external investigation.

This was equivalent to putting his finger in a bursting dam, given that the German company could face penalties of up to $18 billion for allegedly installing the illegal “defeat devices” to falsify emissions tests. Volkswagen shares plummeted on the Frankfurt DAX index in response to the news.

Apart from saving the reputation of his company, Winterkorn should also think about the damage he has done to the corporate sustainability movement. Volkswagen’s actions will fuel the cynics who believe businesses are just paying lip service when it comes to issues like climate change and resource scarcity.

This is a particularly poignant moment for such reflection, given scores of companies are converging on New York over the next few days to join Volkswagen in making commitments during Climate Week to creating a low-carbon economy.

What the Volkswagen scandal illustrates is that profit maximization is so deeply embedded in corporate culture that when push comes to shove, the vast majority of companies will put the bottom line above any moral case for change, and sometimes even cheat to keep the short-term profits coming in.

The only way this is going to change is if companies create a revolution in the way that staff are incentivized. If businesses really believe climate change is a serious issue, they need to stop paying their staff purely on the basis of meeting their quarterly targets.

It is true that a small but growing number of companies are starting to incorporate sustainability performance into their executive compensation packages, but these often represent a tiny percentage of overall pay and therefore are unlikely to change behavior.

Research by Wayne Guay, professor of accounting at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, found that for those companies that do incorporate sustainability targets, this normally makes up less than 1 percent of overall pay.

A study by Ceres, a nonprofit focused on sustainable business and climate action, found that in 613 of the nation's largest publicly traded companies, fewer than a third had boards of directors formally overseeing sustainability performance. And just 19 companies, or 3 percent, related compensation directly to voluntary sustainability performance targets such as greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

Ceres points to Alcoa, one of the world's largest producers of aluminum, as a leader in the field. A fifth of Alcoa's executive cash compensation is tied to safety, diversity goals and environmental stewardship, including greenhouse gas reductions and energy efficiency.

Our current form of capitalism has been around long enough for us to know the simple truth that people will act in accordance with how you assess their performance. If Volkswagen had spent the necessary time and energy to drive sustainability deep into the corporate culture, and linked this in a significant way to executive performance, it may have avoided the disaster it now faces.

Other companies looking on would also do well to note that as we move into a more carbon-constrained era, they ignore climate change at their peril.

Do you work for VW or own a VW? We'd like to hear from you. Email emily.peck@huffingtonpost.com.

Correction: An earlier version of this post attempted to compare the warming impact of nitrogen oxide (NOx) and carbon dioxide on the atmosphere. However, our comparison used measurements for nitrous oxide (N2O) and not for NOx . The error has been removed.

Europe's Refugee Crisis Spawns A Billion-Dollar Industry

Europe's refugee crisis is not only an urgent humanitarian disaster, but has also spawned an incredibly lucrative industry. Refugees and migrants are spending immense sums of money in attempts to reach Europe, siphoning more than billion dollars a year into an underground economy of traffickers. Likewise, EU member states are increasing funds for border control programs and deportations to stop people from entering their nations.  

Between 2000 and June 2015, migrants and refugees have paid traffickers over 16 billion euros to reach Europe, according to The Migrants' Files, a data journalism organization that has analyzed thousands of payments to smugglers to estimate the size of the trafficking market.

While that figure may seem astronomical, The Migrants' Files says it's a conservative number that doesn't include recent months of record migration.

More than 381,000 people have attempted to enter Europe by sea so far in 2015, dwarfing the number of journeys made in previous years. There were nearly 130,000 sea arrivals in the Mediterranean this August alone, up from around 33,000 arrivals during the same month in 2014. Given the exponential increase, the money traffickers receive likely far exceeds The Migrants' Files' estimate. 

Syrians make up the largest group of migrants and refugees -- accounting for just over half of the people making the trip -- while Afghans and Eritreans are the next most-represented nationalities.  

Traffickers have charged many people thousands of euros for the trip to Europe. Smuggling routes vary depending on the region, and can consist of thousands of miles of travel to get to the Mediterranean. African migrants and refugees often pass through trafficking hubs in cities like Agadez in Niger or Sabha in Libya. Once they arrive, smugglers take them in truck convoys to the Libyan coast.

One of the more popular routes this year runs through the Balkans. Many people travel from Turkey toward Greece and beyond, passing through Hungary to more hospitable countries like Germany and Austria. 

It can cost around 2,500 euros per person to travel from Syria to Germany, according to Der Spiegel, but prices vary according to a person's country of origin. A Libyan smuggler told the Guardian in April that people from sub-Saharan African usually paid less than 1,000 euros, while Moroccans paid no more than 1,500 euros.  

Smugglers often operate within a network, rather than as lone actors. Trafficking organizations have hierarchies for everyone from recruiters and drivers to financiers and organizers, who all carry out specific functions within the group. They're paid through an informal money exchange system that uses banking offices and ticketed receipts, according to Der Spiegel.

Meanwhile, migrants' experiences on their journeys to Europe can be vastly different from what traffickers have promised them. Traffickers often replace proper transport with overloaded, rickety boats that frequently capsize or leave people stranded, or with cramped trucks in which they can suffocate to death. Some travelers face violent armed robberies while at sea.

While there is still no comprehensive policy for addressing smuggling networks and the refugee crisis, European leaders have noticed the growing human trafficking industry.

This year, the EU has ramped up anti-trafficking measures, which included launching a new naval operation this summer in the Mediterranean. But while the deepening crisis has highlighted the importance of Europe's response to smuggling, European nations have already spent billions over the past decade and a half to secure their borders in a policy informally known as "fortress Europe."

The Migrants' Files report finds that the EU and European states allocated more than a billion euros for walls, guard equipment and coordinated border security efforts between 2000 and 2014. This doesn't include more recent projects, like Hungary's 109-mile border fence.

During this period, the EU also publicly funded 39 research and development projects to enhance border security, at a cost of 230 million euros. 

Finmeccanica, a company that handled 16 of these projects, came under fire in 2012 for delivering a shipment of radio equipment to the Bashar Assad government in Syria while the country's revolution was underway.

European countries spent an additional 11.3 billion since 2000 on deportations alone, although The Migrants' Files notes that this is an estimate, because only Belgium keeps a full record of its spending on deportations.

Europe is spending money to combat a trafficking industry it actually helped create, rights groups and migration experts say. They argue that European countries' restrictive border policies have forced refugees and migrants to turn to dangerous trafficking routes.

"Such policies only serve to open a new and lucrative market for smuggling rings, a market which could not exist without this prohibition,” François Crépeau,a U.N. expert on migration, stated in June.

While countries such as Germany and Austria expect to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees this year, other countries and EU officials have balked at the suggestion that they have a humanitarian responsibility to accept asylum claims.

EU ministers are set to meet on Sept. 14 to discuss how to address the crisis, with nations calling for a unified asylum policy.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, called on Wednesday for sweeping reforms that could open up legal channels for migration and overhaul border control policy.

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