Vicente Fox - Let’s Move On: Beyond Fear & False Prophets

A SAVIO REPUBLIC BOOK

An Imprint of Post Hill Press

Lets Move On:

Beyond Fear & False Prophets

2017 by Vicente Fox

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-68261-543-0

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-5-447

Interior Design and Composition by Greg Johnson/Textbook Perfect

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the
author and publisher.

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Published in the United States of America

CHAPTER 4

Climate Change
and the Environment

Some scientists believe climate change is the cause of unprecedented melting of the North Pole I think we should listen to those scientists and experts.

T HE D ALAI L AMA

D ONALD T RUMP S EEMS P ATHOLOGICALLY obsessed with national security and has vowed to increase defense spending along with cracking down on an imagined hostile immigrant takeover. Yet, for all of Trumps mania about increasing military might and hiring thousands of new customs and border patrol officers, he doesnt understand that physical walls and Muslim travel bans cannot protect anyone from the single biggest threat humanity faces today. Climate change is real, its effects are getting ever more dramatic, and the world as we know it faces an existential crisis unless we all work together to slow down and reverse it.

I was raised on a ranch where our very lives depended on the land and the animals. When you grow up so close to the land, you tune in to the cycle of lifethe air, the rain, the clouds, the animalsyou cannot help but have a deep, reverential respect for the environment and for all living creatures. Everything we need to livethe water we drink, the air we breathe, the food we grow and hunt, the shelter we build, and the clothes we wearevery single thing we need is provided by this earth. We are utterly dependent on the environment, and this is precisely why we need to take care of it.

The overwhelming majority of the scientific community has agreed that climate change is real and that humans are directly contributing to the earths warming. Trump, however, is on record absurdly saying climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese in order to gain economic leverage over the United States. Again, his attacks on another country are based on xenophobic propagandahe asks that his constituents deny the reality of widely accepted, evidence-based, scientific data because the alternative fact is that foreigners want to bring harm to the United States.

It is hard to know whether Trump actually believes his own propaganda, or whether he is speaking from political expediency to rile up his 30 percent base of supporters, but ask anyone who has lived as long as Trump and I both have, anywhere in the world, and that person will tell you the climate is changing, because we can see it with our own eyes. A vivid example for me is the Lerma River, which travels to my home state of Guanajuato from the state of Toluca. I saw this river go from being a pristine, almost 500-mile-long body of water that provided water for millions of people to today having just 10 percent of its former capacity.

When I was running for president of Mexico, it was of extreme importance to me that Mother Earth be at the top of the political agenda for the first time in my countrys history. I won the presidency with a coalition of special interests that included the Green Party. My ultimate goal, of course, was to help bring Mexico into a democratic, fiscally prosperous future, but it was my firm belief that the countrys economic development had to be tied in with absolute respect for the environment. During my travels all over my country, Id seen indigenous communities who lived off the natural environment and who depended on it for nourishment and housing, have to make do with the remnants of what rampant industrial development had leftscorched lands and polluted rivers. I knew that we needed to make use of Mexicos vast natural resources to improve the countrys wealth, but we also had to protect the untouched land we had left and clean up that which we had directly destroyed.

Humanitys needs obviously have a direct impact on the environmentwe are causing massive disruptions in the balance of wildlife by overfishing and overhunting; we are polluting the quality of our air and water by burning fossil fuels, and changing the composition of our land with agricultural practices that eventually lead to desertification of once fertile earth. While our very own direct actions impact our immediate environment, the more consequential threat is what our actions are causing on a global scale.

Science has shown that climate change is caused by the release of carbon dioxide, as a direct consequence of burning fossil fuels for our energy needs. We need to move from fossil fuels to other forms of energy as soon as possible, and we need to increase the efficiency of our current energy use. If we dont change our ways, the future of all living things looks dire. Climate change is already the leading cause of mass animal and human migrations, which lead to intensifying conflicts as people fight for diminished resources. The resulting displacement and dislocation cause cracks in the social cohesion necessary for domestic political stability. Rising sea levels, floods, droughts, and heat waves are all natural events that force migration.

Many articles have been written about the direct consequences of climate change on geopolitics. For example, after years of study, experts have now drawn a direct connection between the horrifying war in Syria and the regions worst drought in almost one thousand years. The drought caused 75 percent of the farmlands along with the majority of the livestock to be destroyed. Millions of people of varying tribes and factions in Syria were displaced and forced together into limited territory because of a lack of food and water.

A fight for resources lowers the capacity for tolerance and understanding between people and exacerbates political strife and chaos; this is especially true in tribal-based cultures. Even the U.S. Pentagon recognizes that global warming is a strategic threat to political stability the world overwith infrastructure destroyed and limited access to food and water, disease spreads and people have to choose between leaving or certain death. Geopolitical upheaval also breeds and spreads extremist ideologies among a desperate population looking for immediate help and answers.

Despite the years of research and the evidence we have available, the world is still divided on how to counter global climate change. We have plenty of solutions, but there remains a debate on specific methods and whether the industrialized nations should bear the majority of the cost. For example, Mexico has made a rapid and widespread social, political, and economic transformation over the past two decades, but compared to the United States, it is still a developing nation. In an emerging market, people want solutions to poverty in the here and now. Those who are very poor have needs that are immediatethey are not thinking about protecting the land for their childrens children; they are thinking of their next meal.

My administrations struggle to negotiate economic growth with environmental responsibility in mind did not come without a fightthere were farmers who resisted the government trying to put an end to slash-and-burn agriculture or our attempts to enact policies that would revert farmland back to protected status. There were many times that environmental protection actions were met with violence from Mexican citizens, as men wielded machetes to protect their traditional rights to burn forests, cut down trees, or poison lakes and rivers with banned pesticides that helped keep their crops from illness but were making people sick. Every sweeping change we made in the hopes of bettering life for everyone directly impacted some people in a way that they found unfair.