A new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates the environmental destruction Trump’s proposed border wall will wreak upon the planet:
A 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) wall would require an estimated 275 million cubic feet of concrete. It would release as much as 1.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to Christoph Meinrenken, an associate research scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. That’s more than the annual emissions from every home in Pittsburgh.
That’s just for the raw materials alone. This is to say nothing of all the machinery that will be required to put it there, as well as the displacement of indigenous creatures and associated damage.
For a great visualization of the madness, check out this short film from The Intercept that shows just how much ground there is to cover.