Climate change causes … prostitution?

Climate change causes … prostitution?

Climate change is turning into the hobgoblin of political posturing, with both sides seemingly incapable of making it through a news cycle without finding some new and exciting way to bring up the impending boiling of our oceans.

Progressives can always be counted on to play connect-the-dots with their favorite token issues, and a new Congressional resolution does just that.

California Democrat Barbara Lee proposed a resolution in the House of Representatives late last month that encourages policymakers to frame their approach to climate change through the lens of gender equality. The resolution claims that women in developing areas could eventually be forced into prostitution in exchange for access to clean water and food for their families.

Correlation vs. causation—it’s a problem for liberals.

Dennis Miller opines:

This isn’t the first time that Lee has hung her hopes on the attenuated connection between weather and sex work. She filed an identical resolution in 2013. For the sake of being fair and balanced, here’s how PolicyMic explained the resolution when it was first introduced:

According to the Resolution women are already marginalized in many developing countries by “lack of economic freedom, property and inheritance rights, as well as access to financial resources, education, family planning and reproductive heath, and new tools, equipment, and technology …”

This means that women will have less opportunity to adapt and may have to turn to extreme measures, such as sex work or early marriage, to ensure survival for themselves and their families. Especially in countries dealing with high unemployment and financial woes, many women are tricked into sex slavery by persons claiming to offer them decent jobs in other regions.

The resolution also reported that many women in the United States are vulnerable to climate change in different ways. It was noted that Hurricane Katrina displaced over 83% of low income, single mothers.

Here’s the thing: saying “women are vulnerable to climate change” is like saying that women are vulnerable to life, which is less of an issue and more of a reality that needs to be addressed outside the bounds of pseudo-science.

If Lee is concerned about the ravages of prostitution, she should do much more than settle for a thinkpiece resolution that panders to progressive activists but doesn’t actually get anything done. Perhaps she could encourage her colleagues in the Senate to stop stalling and start supporting Senator Cornyn’s Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which would devote manpower, resources, and increased legal protections to the victims of sex trafficking and forced sex work.

This resolution is anchored in the false premise that broadening the discussion about a problem will automatically lead to solving the problem. If Lee believes so fiercely in protecting women from inequality and violence, why doesn’t she create a discussion by filing a piece of legislation that would give her something actionable?

It wouldn’t necessarily be reasonable, or workable, but at least we’d take a step away from the time-wasting strategy of “starting a dialogue” about problems we can actually work to fix.

You can read the full 2013 resolution here.

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