We are halfway through 2024, and global warming is continuing to break records, with scientists increasingly predicting that this year could surpass 2023 as the hottest year. One thing is abundantly clear: climate change is more than a potential threat—it is here.
Communities around the world are seeing sea levels rise, flooding worsen, drought conditions intensify, biodiversity lost, and much more. The climate impacts are crashing directly into countless other pre-existing challenges, creating the truly global crisis that we now understand climate change to be.
Extreme weather, for example, forces people to migrate and drives conflicts over increasingly scarce resources.
Extreme weather, for example, forces people to migrate and drives conflicts over increasingly scarce resources. One prime example is South Sudan, where changing climate patterns have increased tensions between smallholder farmers relying on rain-fed agriculture and nomadic pastoralists. As available fertile land decreases, more communities are forced to compete for existing resources.
These openings for conflicts are not limited to just South Sudan. The 2023 State of the Global Climate Report by the World Meteorological Organization found that the climate crisis has impacted tens of millions of people worldwide. It has led to billions of dollars in losses and damages, devastated food systems, and increased communal tensions.
The cruel irony of the climate crisis is that its effects are most immediately felt by communities in the Global South.
The cruel irony of the climate crisis is that its effects are most immediately felt by communities in the Global South—by those who contributed least to the emergency. Many developing countries cannot afford the transition to cleaner energy sources needed to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. They also do not have the resources to build the infrastructure to protect their communities from such effects as wildfires, floods, droughts, and sea level rise.
Without these measures, communities in the Global South will be left without the capacity to withstand the growing impacts of climate change.
These communities need support from wealthier nations. And wealthier nations, like the United States., have the moral obligation to supply this help.
Today, the impacts of the climate crisis are borderless.
Today, the impacts of the climate crisis are borderless. In 2022, we saw devastating floods in Pakistan. At its worst, more than one-third of the country, an area the size of Wyoming, was flooded and at least 8 million people were displaced.
Droughts in the Horn of Africa left more than 20 million people hungry in 2023, spelling disaster for communities in Somalia, Sudan, and elsewhere already wracked by civil and political unrest.
This year threatens even more chaos in the Caribbean, as an intense hurricane season ramps up around Haiti. It threatens to increase poverty and forced migration in the event of a catastrophic impact on the island-nation. All the while, Haiti continues to wade through unprecedented levels of gang violence and desperation.
To put it simply, climate change is making the world poorer, less peaceful, and hungrier. Whatever pre-existing challenges a country faces will only be made worse by climate change. We must act to break these cycles of suffering.
This year is shaping up to be an important one for global climate action. Delegates to the United Nations climate summit in Azerbaijan in November will have critical negotiations to increase the global goal for international climate assistance. This is the funding that developed countries will provide to support developing countries’ transition to clean economies and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
As one of the biggest contributors to the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change, the United States should lead the world in solving this crisis.
FCNL recognizes that the long, rich history of moral teachings from the Religious Society of Friends calls us to not only care about the environment but to actively advocate for those who may not have the power or privilege to do so themselves.
In times like these, we are reminded of Psalm 24:1: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein.” It is a moral imperative to protect and restore the earth and the people in it.
Funding for international climate assistance for our global neighbors is one of the most effective ways the United States can fulfill this calling of caring for our planet. By doing so, the United States will ensure that we bring ourselves closer to the world we seek, and an Earth restored.
