Don’t be fooled by Trump’s fallacies.
News of the world environment
NEWSLETTER | OCTOBER 6, 2023
Greener Heads Will Prevail
Hoping to sway blue-collar voters at a rally in Michigan last week, the former president, criminal defendant, and GOP frontrunner Donald Trump leaned into an old cliche: the economy vs. the environment. “You can be loyal to American labor or loyal to environmental lunatics,” he told a crowd of supporters. “You can’t be loyal to both.”
As with so many other matters, though, Trump here is mistaken. In fact, US labor and the economy are tightly bound to environmental concerns, and that is becoming more and more obvious. This week, Bloomberg analysts put numbers to the facts.
The cost of burning fossil fuels, Bloomberg Intelligence found, has averaged about $500 billion a year since 2016. The number represents “the combined expenses from property damages, power outages, government spending, and construction-surge inflation at the state level,” though it doesn’t even count wages lost to wildfires or extreme heat, or money sunk into rising insurance premiums.
That adds up to trillions of dollars lost, weighing down the economy and its workers. If candidates want to win over hard-working US voters, they’ll soon have to come up with a better message than the nature-versus-labor fallacy.
Environmental lunatics? The truly misguided are those who still cling to a gas-guzzling, plastic-littering economy that simply won’t hold up. It won’t be long until most voters figure that out.
In the meantime, stay focused out there.
Brian Calvert
Associate Editor, Earth Island Journal
Photo by Los Muertos Crew
TOP STORIES
Check-Up
Southern Resident orcas have been endangered for decades, but scientists still struggle to track disease among the marine mammals. New research mining thousands of photos of killer whales for signs of ill health could help close the data gap.
READ MORE
Tackling Food Insecurity
A small regenerative farm in Lebanon is combating food insecurity, creating jobs, and charting a path forward in the embattled country.
READ MORE
As a nonprofit, Earth Island Journal is driven by purpose, not profit. We have no billionaire benefactors. We rely on the support of people like you. Can we count on you to donate to the Green Journalism Fund?
Count me in!
Sculpting the Wild
Trailer McQuilkin has trekked to the top of snow-capped mountains, climbed down deep gorges, and trudged through marshes to find the rare and endangered wildflowers that inspire his lifelife sculptures.
READ MORE
ICYMI
Finding Voice
Sometimes it takes a wee while to really speak up, or rather, get that howl going. In the meantime, adorableness ensues.
WATCH HERE >>
Photo Ryan Nordsven/USFWS
Slow Travel
After six months of fieldwork in the Solomon Islands, a German climate researcher decided to take the slower, greener route home rather than fly. Come Monday, he may be out of a job.
READ MORE >>
Photo aries nha/pexels
Did a thoughtful friend forward you our newsletter? Keep up with the latest from Earth Island Journal!
SIGN UP TODAY
Follow
Follow
Subscribe
You are receiving this email newsletter because you signed up on our website.
If this newsletter was forwarded to you, you can sign up to the email newsletter here.
Support our work by subscribing to our quarterly print magazine.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2023 Earth Island Journal, All rights reserved.
Our mailing address is:
Earth Island Journal
2150 Allston Way Ste 460
Berkeley, CA 94704-1375
Add us to your address book
From: Editors, Earth Island Journal
Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2023 3:45 AM
Subject: Greener Heads Will Prevail
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.enwl.net.ru/pipermail/enwl-eng/attachments/20231008/2647154b/attachment-0001.html>