Down & Outbound: The Hub

A Price to Pay

These two news items appeared on the same day during the week when President Trump announced his re-election bid in Orlando, Florida. The first was an Associated Press story that appeared on the front page in the June 20th edition of the Chicago Tribune. The second graphic was an article that appeared in The Guardian about the costs of seawalls to keep certain coastal states from ending up under water. 

Check out which pivotal state in the 2020 election is projected to pay the most in seawall construction as a result for continued reliance of fossil fuels.  

 

Price Comparisons: Hurricane vs. Public Transportation

The other day I was reading this article from the September 20th edition of The Economist while riding a crowded MARTA train:

And that's not all -- then there is the loss of poultry and pigs:

You could buy a lot of greenhouse gas-reducing public transportation for that kind of money and maybe save yourself the expense of a hurricane or two:

 

But either way, those chickens are not coming back...

Climate Change's Biggest Problem

As I read Rob Walker's article "How to Trick People into Saving Money" in the May, 2017 issue of The Atlantic magazine, I drew a connection to behavioral economist Daniel Eckert's thoughts about saving money and how it relates to saving the environment.  Walker writes, "Americans difficulty saving, Daniel Eckert* told me recently, is a textbook example of how brains wired to reckon with short-term threats and opportunities struggle to think about long-term consequences  -- and struggle even harder to take current action to stave off future disaster."

Perhaps that is where the solution to slowing down climate change lies, tricking people into saving the environment.

*Footnote: Walker's article covers how Walmart is marketing a Moneycard type app to get their customers who don't normally save, to stash away money. Eckert oversees Walmart's financial service businesses.