"The Case for Open Borders": Climate Change

Hurricane. Image source.

Here's another quote from the book "The Case for Open Borders". This is from page 126:

The United States spent eleven times more militarizing its borders than on helping poorer countries mitigate the effects of climate change. Canada, the worst offender, spent fifteen times more on border enforcement. In effect, those countries, the report concludes, are trying to build a "climate wall" to keep the effects of climate change-- displaced people-- out. Mohamed Nasheed, former president of Maldives, a country that is literally being washed away by rising seas, had a message for Western countries, as reported by writer Suketu Mehta: "You can drastically reduce your greenhouse gas emissions so that the seas do not rise so much. Or when we show up on your shores in our boats, you can let us in. Or when we show up on your shores in our boats, you can shoot us. You pick."

Opening borders, it bears repeating, is not the solution to our climate crises, but it will help mitigate some of their worst effects. Opening borders will also prompt a reevaluation of the extractive/exploitative capitalist regime that is driving the hyper-carbonization of the atmosphere, the acidification of the oceans, the kindling of the rainforests, and the general trashing of ecosystems. Ruling regimes rely on borders to paper over these egregious harms, find loopholes in protective legal systems, and leverage differentials in labor laws to maximize constant production and growth, the flip side of which is constant destruction and waste-- or, to use a scarily apt neologism: ecocide.