These days, I imagine the only way to avoid any news regarding President Trump is if you destroyed all of the electronics in your home, threw your social security card in the fireplace and have been living as a hermit in the woods for the last three and a half years. If you have been able to do this, congratulations on not having to know that Donald Trump is our president. I wish that I could unlearn that information too, but I'm gonna have to burst your bubble. In an effort to get his big, beautiful wall built, Donald Trump has declared a national emergency on the southern border to get the funds that he needs. Whether or not there actually is an emergency is not the point of this piece. I mean, there isn't an emergency, but that's not what this is about.
The definition of a national emergency is "A situation beyond the ordinary which threatens the health or safety of citizens and which cannot be properly addressed by the use of other law". We could argue until the cows come home about whether or not illegal immigration fits this definition (it doesn't), but even if it did (which it doesn't), it wouldn't even be close to the biggest threat that the United States is facing to its national security today. The biggest threat to America today isn't immigrants. It isn't foreign terrorism, or domestic terrorism, or opioids, or even the current administration - although that is a close second. No, the biggest threat to the United States right now is climate change.
Now before you call me a tree hugging, pot smoking, dirty hippie, at least just hear me out. The future effects of climate change on our environment are well documented. They are also drastic. However, it won't just be plants and animals that will be harmed by this; humans will be negatively affected as well. For example, bees pollinate a vast amount of plants, fruits, and vegetables that humans consume. If the bees go, then so do the majority of the agricultural products that we depend on. Changes in weather cycles will also change weather patterns, leading to droughts and floods where there were none before, meaning in places that aren't prepared for them. This will lead to not only food shortages, but massive wildfires (see California) and extreme loss of life.
Sea levels are also expected to rise. Think about all of the cities in America on the coast: New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Seattle, Boston, New Orleans, the entire state of Hawaii, you get the point. Millions of Americans are going to either be killed or lose their homes, resulting in mass migrations of "climate refugees" further inland. Climate change would also cost the United States billions of dollars in lost economic activity. To help understand why: let me remind you that the New York Stock exchange would be underwater. On top of everything else, a massive economic depression would happen, leading to mass unemployment, poverty, homelessness, starvation, social and political unrest, and maybe even one or two revolutions against the government. Oh, that reminds me, if you're reading this in a hundred years, don't eat the Soylent Green. You'll thank me later.
Whatever happens because of climate change, it will be magnitudes ahead of whatever emergency that illegal immigrants are supposedly causing. In conclusion, if you want to declare a national emergency, do it for climate change because time is running out to save humanity from the terrible future I just mentioned.
