Can’t afford conflict

My world as a young person feels like it is on fire. In some places (see: Australia), it quite literally is. In others, like America, “fire” feels like war and declining economic opportunity. America has been at war for most of my lifetime. And now, with less than half the time I’ve been alive to avoid climate disaster, politicians and media tout “American interests” to garner support for more military escalation in the Middle East. We must resist this false patriotism by scrutinizing how media and politicians fail to acknowledge the true costs and tradeoffs of military conflict over climate action.

I remember patriotically reliving 9/11 each year in school, feeling profound gratitude for the bravery of our service members. With a father who served in the Air Force, my mind immediately goes to the soldiers recently sent to the front lines of Trump’s ego. However, I am shocked by the costs of conflict that media and politicians do not emphasize: I imagine the 10,000-plus troops whose lives were uprooted by recent deployments, mostly young and pushed into service by declining economic opportunity; I imagine their families and Iranian families negotiating a livable future through bullets.

Arkansas makes the firefight feel distant, though. The costs of war and climate feel at odds with our everyday reality. However, the costs of climate change increase exponentially as we delay action and will land squarely on the youngest generations. We cannot mitigate added costs of expanded military conflict. Our battle is here at home against the existential and universal national security threat that is climate change. My plea from the young is that you do everything you can to scrutinize the commentary made by media and politicians in times of conflict in the context of our one common global interest: a livable future.

MAXIM APPLEGATE Conway