+
upworthy
Most Shared

Trump is already building a wall in Ireland, and the story behind it is ridiculous.

The Lodge at Doonbeg is one of the most highly praised resorts in Europe.

It attracts visitors from across the globe for its scenic views of Ireland's Atlantic coast and, most importantly, for its celebrated golf course.

Since February 2014, the resort has been owned by Trump International, who scooped it up after the previous owners reportedly became unable to afford the necessary repairs from a particularly harsh winter.


"We’re going to reshape it and make it one of the greatest golf courses in the world," Trump said at the time.

Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images.

Trump's first order of business? Build up the part of the golf course that runs along the beach.

An officially protected "special area of conservation," Doonbeg's Doughmore Beach had already lost more than 30 feet of its legendary dunes to erosion due to rising sea levels.

So Trump's sons Eric and Donald Jr. gave the go-ahead to move some massive boulders on the sand at the edge of the property — without bothering to get the proper construction clearance first.

As you can imagine, that didn't go over well. Local officials put a stop to the un-permitted rock wall quickly.

So the Trumps responded by ... threatening to build an even bigger wall.

It's a classic Trump negotiation tactic: If we have to ask permission to drop a few big boulders on your beloved beach, then we might as well go all the way and spend millions of dollars on a 200,000-ton rock wall that's almost two miles long and 15 feet tall.

"It seems a very heavy-handed approach," David Flynn of the local West Clare Surf Club told the Irish Examiner. "We are not anti-development and we had a very good relationship with the golf club since 2002, but what they are planning is a quantum leap from previous proposals."

A view of Trump's Doonbeg resort from the water. Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images.

When the Trumps filed a permit application with the Clare County Council about building the wall, they used climate change to justify the project.

According to Politico's review of the application's environmental impact statement prepared by an Irish environmental consultancy, it said in part (emphasis added):

"If the predictions of an increase in sea level riseas a result of global warming prove correct, however, it is likely that there will be a corresponding increase in coastal erosion rates not just in Doughmore Bay but around much of the coastline of Ireland. [...] The existing erosion rate will continue and worsen, due to sea level rise, in the next coming years, posing a real and immediate risk to most of the golf course frontage and assets."

Basically, they argued that this giant wall is necessary in order prevent additional damage from rising sea levels, which are caused by global warming and only getting worse.

Put another way:

THE TRUMPS...

WANT TO SPEND...

$11 MILLION DOLLARS...

ON A SEA WALL...

TO STOP SOMETHING...

THAT DONALD TRUMP...

DOESN'T EVEN...

BELIEVE EXISTS.

Keep in mind that Trump blamed the struggles of his Scottish golf resort on "bird-killing" wind farms. He has vowed to renegotiate the already-lackluster Paris Climate Accord if elected president. His proposed energy plan repeatedly refers to a nonexistent thing called "clean coal." And he has previously said that climate change is, "just a very, very expensive form of tax."

And then he specifically cited global warming as the reason why he needed to build an ugly rock wall to protect his treasured Irish golf resort.

Trump at his Aberdeenshire golf course just after Brexit, which he called a "great thing" and that they "took back their country" despite the fact that Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain. But I digress. Photo by Michal Wachucik/AFP/Getty Images.

This is, of course, incredibly maddening logic. But it's about about the environment too.

Rising water levels and erosion are real problems, and seawalls can in fact help mitigate some potential harm to coastal communities. In that regard, Trump's appeal actually makes sense. But according to Friends of the Irish Environment, a proposed 15-foot wall around one specific part of the beach could seriously interfere with Doughmore's ecosystem.

The reverb from Trump's ginormous wall could affect the natural cycle of the dunes and vegetation, hurting not only the rare creatures that live in that pristine environment, but also ruining the beach's reputation as a stunning vista and surf destination. By deflecting the winds and tides, the wall could also cause greater flooding damage to occur along other parts of the coast — where the local people, many of whom work at the resort, have to live.

A rainy day in Doonbeg. Photo by O. Morand/Wikimedia Commons.

Oh, and if the wall doesn't get built? Trump has already threatened to close the resort and devastate the local economy.

Tourism is a multibillion-industry for the Republic of Ireland, and the people of Doonbeg are essentially being held hostage in a catch-22: either Trump's giant wall gets built and the locals lose their beloved beach while bearing the brunt of flooding damage, or 350 people lose their jobs immediately, with the rest of the community suffering as a result of that lost income.

"The fear of our friends and neighbours losing work is very scary," explained an administrator from the Save Doughmore Beach Facebook page, in an interview with Magic Seaweed. "We are in no way trying to close the hotel and golf course, we are just asking for some ethical business practices and some sound environment practices."

Surfers at Doughmore Beach. Photo by Lukemcurley/Wikimedia Commons.

This whole situation is essentially a microcosm of what Trump stands for and how he gets his way.

We've seen him use wealth and status to bully the little guy, while willfully denying the facts of reality just to make some cash. And now he's employing those same manipulative, strong-arm negotiation tactics in a pissing match over environmental issues and the interests of a small community.

It's possible to build coastal protections that don't also damage the environment.

It's possible to build a resort that provides hundreds of jobs without taking over the entire community, impeding their access to public property, and essentially creating an economic throwback to feudal sharecropping.

It's possible to compromise and still make a profit, to provide good services in good faith that make the world a better place and also keep the money coming.

But Trump's modus operandi has always been the same: He'll say that climate change is a hoax at the same time that he builds an ivory tower to protect himself from its effects, while also abandoning his own workers to live with worsened water threats and no choice but to just keep working for the man who got them into that situation in the first place.

That's not the kind of person that I want to see in the White House.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

Keep ReadingShow less
Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

Keep ReadingShow less

An English doctor named Edward Jenner took incredible risks to try to rid his world of smallpox. Because of his efforts and the efforts of scientists like him, the only thing between deadly diseases like the ones below and extinction are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Don't be that parent.

Unfortunately, because of the misinformation from the anti-vaccination movement, some of these diseases have trended up in a really bad way over the past several years.

Keep ReadingShow less

A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

Keep ReadingShow less