Giving Money Wisely

I consider myself to be a relatively generous person.  I like to give when I am able to meet a need or to encourage a public good.  When it comes to giving money, I’ve even automated my giving on a monthly basis to Women for Women International, Doctors Without Borders, The Boys and Girls Club of Detroit (hometown), PBS, Cal Lutheran University Annual Fund, a Cal Lutheran Scholarship Fund and KCLU public radio.  In stores, I often say “yes” to the receipt round up or extra $$ to benefit the charity of the month.  But when the call came out to donate to  victims of Hurricane Harvey, I have paused to consider it.  This is really unusual for me.  I’ve given to each and every natural disaster by donating to the American Red Cross.  I trust them because they give 90 cents of every dollar directly to help the victims of the disasters they respond to.  Even yesterday morning in Vons grocery store, when presented the opportunity to donate to Hurricane Harvey at checkout, I declined.  I’m still wrestling with myself.

At the heart of the issue is not the need among the victims or any distrust in the Red Cross.  At the heart is whether I would be entering into a co-dependent relationship with policy makers or government officials who knowingly allowed homes to be built in a flood zone.  Environmentalist warned that they needed to keep the marshlands in place to act as a sponge to absorb the waters.  Instead, they built whole communities there.

I can’t help but wonder if Al Gore was right when he talked about water bombs coming our way as a result of climate change.  The warm waters fueled the 1000 year rainfall that Houston just experienced.  I wonder if Mother Nature isn’t defending herself by shutting down the oil refineries that feed our appetite for burning the fossil fuels at the heart of human driven climate change.

If I have to choose a side, I choose the side of a future for our children on an earth that is not rebelling against our bad choices.  We need to wake up and act wisely.  I pay a lot in federal taxes every year as my patriotic duty.  I have to decide if I’ve done enough to help the victims by just doing that.  I’m glad that my taxpayer dollars help to fund FEMA and our government’s disaster relief.  I understand that FEMA is already in the hole and will need a lot more tax payer dollars to do its job.  Maybe our leaders need to rethink how our tax dollars are spent.  I certainly don’t want to build a wall on the Mexican border.  I hate the way we spend on prisons and defense.  If too many of us donate to this disaster, are we giving our government the ability to misallocate our tax dollars on stupid things like that wall and tax breaks for the wealthy instead?

I’m angry that too many of our governmental leaders, including Trump, aren’t even addressing the causes of this disaster.  If the science is right, these climate change disasters will only increase in number and intensity if we don’t change our ways.  I’ve heard nothing but comforting words for the victims.   They need to be comforted and given aide to recover.  But at the same time, the Trump administration has proposed cutting the funding to FEMA.  It has removed the scientific information about climate change and has taken us out of the Paris Climate Accord. Where is the  acknowledgement by this administration that we need to work to prevent future disasters such as this and keep our citizens out of harms way?

Who will pay for the misery to come?  We all will. We’ll pay with tax dollars and  donations from the generous American people.  I’d be willing to donate to a fund to move us toward cleaner energy that protects the environment.  I’d donate to help rebuild the communities that were flooded to a safer location.   But to donate funds to alleviate the suffering today without any acknowledgement of how this happened and how we can prevent it happening again, I can’t seem to bring myself to do it.  But if I have a change of heart in the days to come, the Red Cross will hear from me.