For too long now, I’ve been listening to tired rhetoric from all sides pitting our ‘economy’ against our ‘ecology.’  Expect that we will hear this through the coming 2024 election season.

All those horrible and painful job-killing environmental requirements have caused our steady economic decline, right? The precept is that to have a strong economy, there is little choice but to damage the environment.  Or another spin often repeated that to nurture our environment means we must sacrifice financial gain. Increasingly accepted has been this false dichotomy between our economy and our ecology.  This general perspective is increasingly accepted today, and wrong.

‘Economy’ and ‘ecology’ were born from the same Greek root word ‘oikos’ which refers to three related but distinct concepts: the family, the family’s property, and the house. 

So let’s talk about houses. Do you think that the houses in Flint Michigan with lead-tainted poison flowing from their taps have higher or lower real estate values? 

How about those family properties? How about those communities?  Would you guess those neighborhoods were made stronger or weaker by their ecology? Think about any other environmental disaster.  What about the beach-front property owners in the wake of the BP spill in the Gulf – or the farmer in the west with no more water for crops?

And what about family? Are the families healthier and stronger?  Are the expected lifetimes of the children currently suffering from lead poisoning in Flint improved or diminished? What is the cost to society for the poisoning, the cost to Michigan, and to the city?

It’s a shameful myth that a strong economy and a healthy environment are mutually exclusive. Our ecology and economy are wholly, intrinsically interdependent.  Period. Fact.

We should challenge the false choice where we meet it.  We should stop the confused conflict.  We should stop it today. Our economy and our ecology both depend on it.