Slew of Environmental Leaders Sign Open Letter Urging Voters to Choose Biden Over Green Party

Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 12:11 pm

A slew of environmental leaders has signed an open letter urging voters to choose Democrat Joe Biden over the Green Party this election. The letter was signed by such names as Environmental Action coordinator Peter Harnik and former Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope. (A complete list of signatories can be found HERE.)

Angry right-wing voters and liberal absentees put Trump in the White House in 2016,” the letter reads. “In 2020 the same unholy team could keep him there. Progressives who vote for the Green Party candidate, or write in Henry David Thoreau, or refuse to vote at all for lack of an ideal choice will give Donald Trump precisely what he wants, and enough such pious gestures will produce catastrophic results.”

Elsewhere, they write: “Some of us supported Biden in the Democratic primary. Others backed one of his rivals. Now only one candidate, a humane, progressive alternative to four more years of decay can beat Donald Trump. Many of us have voted for third-party candidates in other elections, convinced that a party called “Green” was the only principled choice. Not this year. This year the only meaningful green votes will be cast for the single candidate who can end Trump’s disastrous presidency. Only by rallying behind the Democratic party can we end the Trump administration’s unprecedented malignancy, fear mongering, pathological lying, and atrocious policymaking. This is not the year to make a utopian statement or to waste a single vote. This is the year to unseat Donald Trump and his shameless congressional enablers.”

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“There is no environmental problem we faced when Donald Trump assumed the presidency three-and-a-half years ago that is in any way better today. If anything, they will get worse,” said longtime anti-nuclear activist Diane MacEachern, one of the letter’s signatories. “We can either try and put out the fire or we can fan the flame.” 

The Trump administration has rolled back an unprecedented amount of environmental regulations since President Donald Trump took office.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration moved to allow logging in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. The proposal from the Forest Service would result in the cutting down of trees across more than 6,000 acres of forest, including 5,000 acres of old-growth forest that critics say is valuable in the fight against climate change. The Tongass National Forest is a carbon sink, absorbing more carbon than it releases, and mitigating the impact of climate change on human life.

Alan Herrera

Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.