A Week to Look Upstream
It's time to pay for the problems we've caused
When I got my sustainability degree, one of the first things I learned was the river metaphor: If you see a bunch of people drowning in a river you can’t save them all; instead, you need to go upstream and fix the broken bridge.
I thought about that story when I heard that a boat carrying refugees and migrants sank off the coast of Greece on Wednesday. Hundreds of people died, many of them children. Someone wrote online that these incidents in Europe are equivalent to mass shootings in the U.S. — every time it happens politicians offer thoughts and prayers, the public expresses shock and sympathy, and then absolutely nothing changes.
No one tries to fix the bridge.
In the U.S. the solution is simple: strictly regulate guns. From there, you can work on the problems that are driving people toward mass violence.
Migration to Europe is a different type of issue, without a simple solution. There are things that could be done to reduce the number of people drowning in the Mediterranean: Coast guards could do more to rescue people on boats. Governments could make it easier for NGOs to step in and help. The EU could relax immigration laws so that it’s easier for people to travel.
These steps might reduce deaths, but they wouldn’t reduce the number of people trying to migrate because they don’t address the upstream causes — climate change, poverty and violence.
Right now the number of climate migrants has been relatively small and still the reaction has been violent and xenophobic, leading to the rise of fascist wannabe dictators like the one was arraigned on espionage charges this week. But in the coming decades one-third of humanity could be displaced by climate change. What will it look like when that many people start searching for somewhere cooler to live?
If we want people to be able to live and thrive in their home countries, Europe and the United States need to take steps at home to reduce global warming, and we need to end economic exploitation and pay for climate adaptation abroad.
The Paris Agreement included pledges of hundreds of billions for a loss and damage fund, which would help countries recover from climate disasters. Contributions, however, have been woefully short. Another estimate is nearly $200 trillion owed from rich countries to poor countries. That kind of money would give governments the capacity to pursue truly sustainable development — to build renewable energy projects and avoid selling off natural resources; to invest in health care and education; to prepare for the rising heat and tides. But instead we ignore these climate debts, while still insisting that poor countries make good on what they owe.
It’s no wonder people are desperate and on the move.
The dead fish that washed up on the beach in Texas paint a grim picture of what happens when a species can’t migrate in time. Too much heat leads to too little oxygen and that’s it — fish out of its niche. People also have trouble surviving in those temperatures, and hopefully the Texas grid will hold out for the length of this current heat wave, which is predicted to go through at least next week.
Hot weather in Britain this week led the National Grid to turn on a coal fired power plant in order to meet increased energy demand. And in Florida, Farmers Insurance announced they’re going to stop issuing homeowner’s policies because they are too high risk. Yet somehow $750 million invested in fossil fuel companies isn’t risky?
Businesses that are supposed to be helping are profiting off the climate crisis. It’s like they went upstream to burn the bridge, and now they’re shutting down the rescue operation.