Climate Change is Driving Migration. Could Smarter Ag Help?

In recent years, more and more people from Central America have tried to emigrate north to Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Many leave home not because they want to, but because they have to: Droughts, brought on by climate change, have forced many to choose between staying home – and risking starvation – or migrating. But a different way of farming could change that calculus. We look at how climate change is driving immigration, and how climate smart agriculture could help families stay on their land. 

Guests: Daniel McQuillan, Alirio Martinez

Calls to action

• Learn more about the work that Catholic Relief Services is doing on climate smart ag.
• Check out the Biden administration's executive order, designed to increase the adoption of climate smart ag both domestically and globally. The comment period is closed but that doesn't stop you from contacting the agency or your legislators if you support what's in the bill (or have ideas on how to make it better). 
• Call Congress (again)! Back in May, we took a look at the Biden Administration’s proposed climate policies, especially a clean electricity standard (Is Biden’s Jobs Plan a ‘Skinny Green New Deal’?). Well, the clean electricity standard is being debated in Congress right now! So it’s a great time to call your members of Congress and demand serious action on climate change. You can use our tips or check out this handy guide from Fossil Free Media, at call4climate.com. They’ve got a simple script and directions so it’s easy to make your voice heard. 

If you take an action we recommend in one of our episodes, do us a favor and tell us about it! We’d love to hear how it went and what it felt like. Record a short voice memo on your phone and send it to us via our Listener Mail Form. We might use it in an upcoming episode.

Check out our Calls to Action archive here for all of the actions we've recommended on the show. Sign up for our newsletter here. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

*A note to our listeners

Every week on this show, we try to take big, complicated climate topics and make them digestible and actionable. About a month ago in our effort to make things understandable, we got a couple things wrong. In the episode "Can I Switch to Renewables as a Renter," we talked about something called the "REC market" and we oversimplified how it worked and its impact.

We stated that a company called Clean Choice Energy was buying a lower quality type of REC (or renewable energy certificate) in New York. And this was wrong. They are buying the same kind of REC that a utility in New York has to buy -- RECs that comply with the state's renewable portfolio standard. Basically, that means Clean Choice and some other ESCOs do help spur some new renewable energy development — counter to what we said in the episode. We plan to pick apart the details of these markets in more depth in the future, but for now, we have decided to take this episode down.

We're sorry to all of our listeners for getting that wrong. 

*

How to Save a Planet is a Spotify original podcast and Gimlet production hosted by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Alex Blumberg. Our reporters and producers are Kendra Pierre-Louis, Rachel Waldholz and Anna Ladd. Our senior producer is Lauren Silverman. Our editor is Caitlin Kenney. Sound design and mixing by Peter Leonard with original music by Emma Munger. Our fact checker this episode is James Gaines.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices