August 11, 2008
So What Have Those Animals Done for Us Lately?
WASHINGTON - Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct. The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.
New regulations, which don’t require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft obtained by The Associated Press.
The draft rules also would bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and its effect on species and habitats.
Somehow it’s not surprising that those who show so little respect for human life (unless it’s unborn) would so blithely open the way for business interests to carry on with the “I’ll be dead by then” values that drive them. I suppose they feel they have now made some headway in conserving their right to lift the American economy, come Armageddon or high water. See here.
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7 Responses to “So What Have Those Animals Done for Us Lately?”
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The mind boggles. Well, mine at least; I just cannot comprehend the mindset that allows for this. If you say “abortion is murder”, fine; I can understand this as a moral binary, with two sides entitled to their viewpoint.
But “who needs all these animals”? (Okay, that’s a bit of a straw man argument. “The benefit of maintaining long-term biodiversity is outweighed by its short-term cost.”) These folks are gravely mistaken about just how much the planet can take before we start to suffer in palpable ways.
I’m trying to think of a policy decision made in the past eight years that has benefited the greater good.
Well Deron, in a silver lining sorta sense, their worst decisions may have turned out to be the best in the long term. How long might the Reagan Revolution have lasted were it not for their overreaching. (Terry Schaivo, Iraq, wire-tapping, signing statements, right-to-torture, &c &c.)
This is somewhere between humor at the grave and my genuine opinion. My plan is to sober up around Jan 20th of next year.
the problem as I see it, though, Mike, is that the crimes against the country and the world have been so egregious and still we’ve got a close race between a person who stands for everything the previous administration stands for and a person who provides a clear alternative. this country is populated by idiots. what passes for journalism is corporate propaganda and our ‘faith based initiatives’ have led to nothing but a gut sense of who should lead us. where the fuck is the intellect?
I’ll be all right. just give me a second.
Seems the media, and the country in general, has a 50-50 mentality when it comes to this race: if there’s two candidates, than they each must have about the same chance. I blame a lack of proper statistics education.
On a related note, a person has, on average, slightly fewer than two arms.
It’s true. Statistically.
http://www.susanjacoby.com/