Refugees

If You Really Cared About Border Security, You Would Stop Burning Carbon.

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Because you burn carbon, you exacerbate the climate crisis, which causes rising seas and more disasters. The US is responsible for more total carbon emissions than any other country, creating refugees and increasing migration globally. Maybe you neither know nor care about people in other countries, but your carbon emissions are driving migrants to the US. Nicaragua alone has over 100,000 climate refugees due to increasingly violent hurricanes and severe drought wiping out crops and cattle. These problems increase poverty and weaken their government, causing many to flee to other countries, especially the US. If you don’t want a lot more immigrants in the US, then you should stop burning carbon and vote for carbon reduction policies.

Understand that the unprecedented scale of these disasters is man-made, climate-driven and increasing at a rate that humanity has never faced. The problem is not just the disasters we are seeing now. The problem is that we are continuing to make even more disasters even worse every year. Carbon pollution makes disasters more deadly, driving dramatic diasporas and magnifying violent conflict, which causes wars and even more refugees. Wars burn even more carbon. Burning carbon increases border insecurity globally, so the underlying problems are accelerating.

Already, there are tens of millions of climate refugees globally, in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America. Extreme heat and drought drive violent conflicts in Somalia, Sudan, Syria & Yemen. But in 15 years, the number of countries with similarly extreme climate crises is expected to rise from 10 to 65. Flooding has already displaced millions of refugees in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Many of the countries currently hosing refugees are already suffering or will suffer severe climate consequences themselves soon, including millions already displaced in China and the Philippines. As the climate crisis continues to worsen and intensify, the total number of refugees globally will increase dramatically.

Whether you care about the human suffering or not, more and more climate migrants will continue trying to reach the US every year. Increasing border security is extremely expensive. Last year the US allocated an additional $170 billion for more border fencing, Customs and Border Patrol, ICE, new detention facilities, surveillance, etc. Given that the global climate refugee problem is accelerating exponentially, future costs will continue rising even more rapidly. Spending more on solar and wind would lower both energy costs and future costs of dealing with climate refugees. Fixing the climate crisis is the most direct way to reduce the disasters that drive migrants here.

Refusing refugees is cruel. Desperate people historically have also found many ways to enter the country, including flying and overstaying their legal visas. Deporting long term residents to countries that they haven’t seen since infancy is also cruel and can be quite expensive with airfare and legal costs. Spending more on relief programs like USAID both saves lives and reduces the future costs of dealing with climate refugees. And of course, it is not moral to refuse assistance to hundreds of millions of our fellow human beings who will be displaced by our cumulative carbon emissions.

January is National Trafficking Month, and refugees are among the most vulnerable populations forced into human trafficking operations. So choosing to reduce carbon emissions is choosing to reduce human trafficking. Politicians may talk tough on border security, but if they deny the climate crisis, they may be worsening rather than fixing the problem. You may consider yourself anti-crime, but if you vote for people who call climate change a hoax, encourage cryptocurrencies and have personal history with sex-traffickers, then you are contributing to human trafficking on multiple fronts.

So don’t tell me you care about border security, prove it. Stop burning carbon, and vote for climate justice. Fix the climate crisis to increase global border security and human safety.

Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields Memorial National Military Park

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While this is the longest park name, they could have gone with “Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, The Wilderness and Spotsylvania Court House Battlefields Memorial National Military Park”. This is the largest military park covering 70 miles and three years of battles. Outside historic Fredericksburg, there are few buildings to see, including the Old Salem Church (another battle site), Ellwood (where Jackson’s left arm is buried) and the Stonewall Jackson Shrine. There are miles of fields, forests, trenches, historic trails, foundations, key military positions, markers, and memorials, with well over 40 tour stops, and there were visitors at every battlefield even until dusk.

Fredericksburg is roughly halfway between DC and Richmond, the Confederate Capital, which explains the numerous, bloody battles fought in the area. Spotsylvania is the name of the county. Fredericksburg was a Union disaster, under General Burnside, who ordered repeated attacks up the steep hills held by entrenched Confederates, but unlike Antietam all attacks failed and ended in retreat. At Chancellorsville—a one house village— the next year, General Hooker had executed an end run around Lee’s forces in the hills above Fredericksburg, but Stonewall Jackson executed an end run around Hooker’s forces. Jackson was killed, but the Union retreated in another defeat. Lee, confident after many victories, went north to Gettysburg. Another year later, General Grant returned to the Wilderness and Court House of Spotsylvania, finally making progress towards Richmond.

Chatham House, the Union HQ where both Clara Barton and Walt Whitman worked in the hospital, has a commanding view of Fredericksburg above, where Union artillery supported the failed assault. Washington, Jefferson and Madison were among the visitors to the wealthy plantation home that predates the country. Lincoln met with some of his generals here during the war. In the 1920’s the owners built a magnificent formal garden, which makes a nice break from the gruesome battlefields. Fredericksburg also has a historic walking tour, with some buildings that predate the Revolution, monuments to founding fathers and a slave auction block.

There is a common factual error in too many park films on the Civil War: that slavery only became an issue when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This conceit defies all plain fact. Lincoln was anti-slavery from childhood and argued against it his entire life, including all his campaigns and in every office he held. The primary political division in the country pre Civil War was about slavery. Most northern states were not only anti-slavery but had worked on ending slavery since the Revolution. The Abolitionist movement began in Europe in the 1770s and was active openly in the north and in secret in the south before the Civil War. Every southern state that seceded, cited preservation of slavery as the reason. Lincoln’s hesitancy in making it official policy at the outset was due to the few northern border states that were still in the gradual process of ending slavery. Lincoln might have accepted a negotiated settlement early in the war, but the Confederates rejected it, being willing to fight to the death to keep their fellow humans in eternal bondage.

General Lee is quoted at the visitor center in Fredericksburg as expressing his sympathy for the white refugees fleeing south, but he apparently had zero regard for the far greater number of black refugees fleeing north. The Fredericksburg park film expresses much anguish for the destruction of pianos and other household goods, but only briefly mentions that 1/4 of the town were slaves when the Union troops arrived to liberate them. Tens of thousands of slaves fled Virginia through here during the war, crossing the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg and getting passes to travel to refugee camps at Fort Monroe and near DC, seeking the safety of the Union. The lost property that the Confederate newspapers bewailed was largely human property.

Those who hold these Confederate generals in high esteem need to ask themselves why their heroes cared so much about the white residents and not at all about the black residents? It’s possible to admire Von Manstein for his strategies and Rommel for his tactics, but it’s not possible to ignore the 6 million Jews their government killed in the Holocaust. The Civil War ended 158 years ago. Moral judgements must be made about the cause of the war and the motives of the participants. The Confederate cause was evil, and we must not make heroes of those who served the cause of slavery. Stonewall Jackson was not a saint, so he does not deserve a shrine on national park land.