By Marcelle Meyer
Republicans in Congress are celebrating a major victory after having gained control of the Senate last week and now controlling both houses of Congress. It is no surprise that the first item on their agenda involves undermining one of President Obama’s advocacies.
Approving the building of Keystone XL and fighting the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) regulations intended to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere have already been highlighted as some of the major Republican goals as they make themselves at home in the Senate. The argument, of course, is that the environmental regulations take away American jobs, particularly in the home states and districts of many Republican congressmen and women.
However, when weighing these potential American jobs against the worldwide disaster that climate change will create in the next few years, I find that argument difficult to buy.
In terms of the international effects of climate change, some of the most-affected countries will be African nations like South Sudan and Ethiopia. Floods, droughts and other climate disasters will eventually drive these people out of their homes, leading to a massive refugee crisis in a region where there is little infrastructure to accommodate the already large number of refugees. In terms of the national effects, warmer waters are expected to create more powerful natural disasters like hurricanes, and the economic effects of this increase can only be imagined.
It thus requires the government to spend massive amounts of money if it attempts to rebuild after natural destruction. This means that the American jobs for which Republicans are so strongly advocating will be useless if the economic structures supporting them collapse.
The world doesn’t have time to wait for bipartisan compromise about this, and it certainly doesn’t have two years to wait for another round of congressional elections.
Politics rarely have a right answer. There are always at least two sides to every argument, but when the stability of nations and the lives of people all over the world are threatened by something that is within our power to fix, I think it is objectively right to do so. When we have the opportunity to pass regulations that limit environmental harm and open the doors for more sustainable, longer-lasting jobs based on new, clean energy in the future, I think that the possibility of losing temporary jobs now becomes fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
And, if Republicans are determined to prove to the American people over the next two years that they are deserving of the next presidency, then the first step must be to support a sustainable world.
