America faces a choice between foreign aid and immigration
Americans have a choice: either help poorer countries build wealth or welcome a flood of immigrants.
Both options offer enormous business opportunities, so neither would end in a nightmare. But climate change is limiting our options.
Texas is on the front lines with a long border with Mexico and an economy reliant on fossil fuels. We will need to adapt more than most.
How to stabilize a world made more volatile by higher temperaPlans tures was the subject of the COP27 Climate Change Conference in Egypt. Less developed nations with small carbon footprints and little industrialization suffer the most from climate change.
The worst flooding on record inundated a third of Pakistan this summer. Pacific islanders are watching the rising sea level consume their countries. Famine is threatening millions in the Horn of Africa, and extreme weather has damaged crops across the continent.
More than 130 nations are demanding compensation for the loss of economic opportunity and the damage to their environments. Led by Pakistan at COP27, governments that risk collapse because of climate change are asking for
financial help adapting.
Diplomats from these nations are taking a hard line on establishing “loss and damage” because the leaders of the wealthiest countries have failed to keep past promises to provide a few hundred million dollars, when, in reality, hundreds of billions are needed.
The Biden administration, like other world leaders, worries that paying loss and damage could be interpreted as an admission of liability.
“It’s a well-known fact that the United States and many other countries will not establish ... some sort of legal structure that is tied to compensation or liability. That’s just not happening,” U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told the conference.
The problem is not legal culpability but a lack of commercial imagination. U.S. corporations possess the technology that developing countries need to replace fossil fuel plants with renewable technologies. U.S. companies could make billions, Columbia University researcher Sagatoma Saha explained in Foreign Affairs.
“Persuading these companies to enter foreign markets quickly will ensure U.S. companies benefit from being early entrants,” Saha wrote. “Such perks will otherwise be ceded to companies from countries that promote their national industries more aggressively.”
International aid admittedly has a dubious track record. But financing and building infrastructure has proved worthwhile, ending premature death and extending lives so that the global population has reached 8 billion.
Most importantly for wealthy nations, helping others generate clean, affordable energy would allow people to stay home and build stronger economies rather than immigrate.
“Climate adaptation funding that puts incomes back on an upward trajectory and provides hope for the future can decrease the need to migrate,” wrote Sarah Bermeo, a professor at Duke University. “If adaptation options remain limited, international climate migration will continue to grow.”
Texans only need to look at the southern border. The changing climate makes farming far more difficult in Central and South America. Crop failures and subsequent violence have sent families fleeing north, Duke researchers determined.
The number of Honduran families detained at the U.S. border annually rose from 513 in 2012 to 188,368 in 2019, according to Customs and Border Protection figures. One drought-stricken Honduran state saw 7 percent of its population arrested at the U.S. border.
“There is a strong link between rainfall decreases in a (state) and apprehensions of family units from that (state) in the U.S.,” Bermeo determined.
Desperate people do not sit still to starve or watch idly as gangs kidnap their children any more than you would. I’ve watched people in a dozen crises do anything to survive. Risking their lives to reach a nation with ample food, work and safety is a no-brainer.
Texans face a dilemma.
About 200,000 migrants are apprehended at the border every month. That number will only grow if people in troubled countries feel they have no choice but to flee. Financing U.S. investments in clean, affordable energy assets would boost industrialization and economic growth south of the border.
Closer to home, Texans need to slow climate change by weaning ourselves off the oil and gas industry. Otherwise, migration will accelerate as temperatures make life unbearable in tropical countries.
We also need to recognize that the G-20 group of the wealthiest countries is intent on phasing out fossil fuels. Many countries have banned new internal combustion engine sales after 2035 for light-duty vehicles.
Texas companies are developing clean hydrogen and carbon capture technologies, which are vital first steps. If we could expand electric vehicle production and battery manufacturing, all the better. But we need to find alternatives to burning oil and gas if we want to remain the world’s energy capital.