To create a safer, more sustainable world, the United States needs to divert border money toward climate action.
At a National Security Council meeting in September, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that the consequences of climate change “are falling disproportionately on vulnerable and low-income populations.” He continued, “And they’re worsening conditions and human suffering in places already afflicted by conflict, high levels of violence, instability.” He assured his colleagues that the climate crisis is a “core element of U.S. foreign policy” and that “every bilateral and multilateral engagement we have—every policy decision we make—will impact our goal of putting the world on a safer, more sustainable path.”
Blinken’s sentiment was echoed by a report on the impact of climate change and migration from the White House earlier this month, one of a slew of reports as the U.S. prepared for the United Nations summit on climate change that begins in Glasgow on October 31. According to the report, “The current migration situation extending from the U.S.-Mexico border into Central America presents an opportunity for the United States to model good practice and discuss openly managing migration humanely, [and] highlight the role of climate change in migration.”
Hypothetically, these words might reassure the more than 1.3 million Hondurans and Guatemalans displaced in 2020 by climate-induced catastrophes such as droughts, hurricanes, and floods. But the lofty rhetoric is contradicted by another story, one told by the U.S. government’s budgets.
Read the rest as originally reported by The Border Chronicle here.