"The economy" is just another way of saying "all of the things that keep you alive and bring you pleasure." Electricity, food, water, transportation, housing, healthcare — it's all "the economy," every bit of it. When that goes, everything else goes with it.
So yes, this is the correct response from Republicans here:
[D]espite the settled science, the overwhelming evidence and the billions of dollars in increases for disaster preparation and recovery that climate change is costing the country, Republicans have grown more skeptical of the need to prioritize fixing it, according to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.
Oh, "Marist" poll. I think that said Maoist poll. Forgive me.
At any rate, yes, while a majority (53%) of respondents to the Chinese Communist poll said that climate change should be given "priority" over the economy, "almost three-quarters of Republicans (72%) said the economy should be given priority, even at the risk of ignoring climate change."
Which is, you know, obviously true. Even if climate change did pose some sort of meaningful risk to humanity (which it really doesn't), the bigger risk would obviously be hobbling or handicapping your economy.
After all, we got a very clear and brutal taste of what that's like during COVID: We shut down the global economy and it led to literal years of violent and deadly social dysfunction, record-high inflation, sweeping new draconian government powers, years and years of educational loss for children, trillions of dollars in wiped-out wealth...
So yes, obviously we should prioritize the economy. If we don't, we're prioritizing human suffering and global destabilization (including the destruction of the environment as 8 billion people scramble to survive). Those are pretty much your two choices.
