Secretary of State Tony Blinken used his address yesterday at the UN Security Council’s special meeting on climate and security to try to ram down the throats of member nations the argument that the “climate crisis” is the pressing global security issue to be addressed by that body, as it is supposedly the cause of every major problem on the planet. Not all present agreed, as we report further.
The day before his speech, on Sept. 22, a “senior State Department official” gave a media briefing explaining why climate change is an appropriate issue to be discussed at the UNSC, since it stokes tensions within and between nations, causes conflict and migrations and is responsible for extreme weather events which destabilize nations. This official could barely contain her enthusiasm when one reporter referred to Haitian migrants at the U.S. border as “environmental refugees.” While getting the UNSC to pass a resolution on climate as a security threat isn’t likely, she admitted, the U.S. wanted to introduce the topic to put it on the UNSC’s “radar screen.”
In his remarks yesterday, Blinken emphasized that the climate crisis is the core element of U.S. foreign policy. Extreme weather events underscore the “urgent need” to dramatically reduce emissions, and help others “to do their part,” he said. Among the ways in which he proposed the UNSC could play a vital role, a major one would be to stop the debate over whether the climate crisis should be discussed at the UNSC and ask instead how the UNSC can “leverage its unique powers to tackle the negative impacts of climate on peace and security.” Anywhere in the world where there are threats to peace and security, “you’ll find that climate change is making things less peaceful, less secure.” That’s true in Syria, Mali, Yemen, South Sudan, Ethiopia, etc. he said.
Blinken’s punchline was that the only way to deal with this crisis was for the world to accept Malthusian depopulation policies. Rather than view the situation just through the lens of threats posed by the climate crisis, he warned, what’s needed is “immediate, bold actions to build resilience, to adapt to the unavoidable impacts, and move swiftly to a net-zero world.” This, he gravely intoned, is the shared charge of COP26. If the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5° C is to be reached, “every nation will need to bring their highest possible ambitions to the table.” This current situation, Blinken concluded, offers an “unprecedented opportunity” for all nations to embrace fully the zero-growth, zero-people green boondoggle, which he cloaked in the promise to provide greater access to “affordable, clean energy; to build green infrastructure; to create good-paying jobs,” spur long-term economic growth and “improve the lives of people around the world.”
