Over 170 environmental leaders urge supporters not to vote for Green Party

More than 170 of the world's most esteemed environmental activists signed on to an open letter on Monday urging their supporters to vote for Joe Biden rather than vote for the Green Party or sit out the election, The Daily Beast reports.

The big picture: The group says "progressives who vote for the Green Party candidate, or write in Henry David Thoreau, or refuse to vote at all" will help win the election for Trump, whom they excoriated for his "unprecedented malignancy, fear mongering, pathological lying, and atrocious policymaking."

• Flashback: Trump won in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2016 by smaller margins than the total votes cast for Green Party nominee Jill Stein in each state, The Daily Beast notes.
• Signatories to the letter include the likes of Earth Day founder Denis Hayes and Environmental Action coordinator Peter Harnick.

What they're saying: “Angry right-wing voters and liberal absentees put Trump in the White House in 2016. In 2020 the same unholy team could keep him there," the letter reads.

"Sure, [Biden] isn’t perfect. Which of us is? But in the 2020 election, the most crucial since 1865, we have only two meaningful options. We can make a lifetime humanitarian our president, backed by an able cabinet and a progressive Congress; or expand the strongman rule of Donald Trump, who desecrates his office every day, spreads racism and a fatal virus for political gain, ignores environmental justice, embraces the fossil fuel industry, and calls the climate crisis a hoax."

Read the full letter.

Go deeper: Why Biden and the Democrats went big on climate