Wealth & Money Quote by Tom McMillan

McMillan’s line is a piece of political bridge-building disguised as ecological common sense. “Inextricably linked” does heavy rhetorical lifting: it rejects the old jobs-versus-trees cage match without picking a side, then reframes the debate as systems management. It’s not a love letter to environmentalism so much as a bid to make environmental policy sound like fiscal prudence. By insisting “we cannot have one without the other,” he turns what often gets treated as a moral cause into an operational necessity: no clean water, no agriculture; no stable climate, no insurance markets; no healthy workforce, no productivity.

The subtext is coalition math. This is language designed to keep business leaders, labor groups, and climate-minded voters in the same tent. “Balance” is the tell. In policy terms, “balance” can mean smart regulation and innovation, but it also gives cover for incrementalism: if every proposal must prove it helps “both,” the bar can be set high enough to slow meaningful change. It’s a word that sounds moderate while quietly defining ambition downward.

Context matters because this is the kind of sentence that thrives in speeches and op-eds where specificity is politically expensive. It’s a preamble meant to authorize a package of policies without naming the hard tradeoffs: carbon pricing, permitting reform, subsidies, bans. The line works because it offers a moral permission slip to act while leaving room to negotiate what “thrive” actually means - and who gets to count the gains.