O.K., I'm not an eco-nut but

[Colleen Thomas]

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is approving only about one of every two acres that federal biologists propose setting aside to help vanishing species recover.

Between 2001 and 2003, the government cut 42 million acres from plans to create nearly 83 million acres of critical habitat for threatened and endangered species, a National Wildlife Federation study found.

The administration also more often cited economic reasons to justify decisions to reduce acreage. In 2001, that rationale was used to trim about 1 percent of the acreage; by 2003, that had risen to 69 percent.

The federation contends the administration is trying to undermine the Endangered Species Act. That conclusion is based on the group's interpretation of a study, provided to The Associated Press, of all critical habitat plans prepared during the Bush administration by the Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service and the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

The government is required by law to set aside areas that dwindling species need to survive and recover.

John Kostyack, the group's senior counsel, noted a budget office memo regarding a 2002 plan for designating critical habitat for the Topeka shiner, an endangered minnow.

The memo says "the benefits ... are not relevant to the policy decision at hand" — how much land should be set aside in Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota.

In a second example, environmental groups sued the government over a decision to cut to 740,000 acres the nearly 1.7 million acres first proposed in California for protecting seasonal ponds that support 15 species of rare plants and tiny shrimp.

The government had estimated the designation could cost developers $1.3 billion over 20 years for additional consultant fees and modifications to projects. Kostyack said some counties had said they would have no added costs for protecting species.

Kostyack's group said not enough consideration is given to the benefits of protecting species, which include their uses in recreation, science, water and soil quality, and climate.

Even with the scaled-down plan, White House budget office spokesman Chad Colton said the administration was designating a significant amount of critical habitat.

Environmentalists say their suits are meant to force the government to do its job. Administration and industry officials say the legal action is meant to stop development.

The Interior Department has $12 million for its endangered species listing program on public lands and in some marine areas. It asked Congress starting in 1997 to cap the amount for critical habitat, now at $9 million, so environmentalists could not dictate priorities.

In an interview Wednesday, Manson said the administration is only putting to use a part of the law that says critical habitat can be excluded if the economic or other benefits of protecting species do not outweigh the costs.

Manson said the administration has used economic analyses to exclude critical habitat far more than in previous years because "critical habitat provides little additional benefit to species over and above" those when a species is designated as threatened or endangered.

He said that step leads the government to spend hundreds of millions through voluntary programs involving private landowners and farmers.

"All of those acres ... have done far more good than critical habitat, because those are actively managed parcels," he said. "The point is not that there's anything wrong with habitat; we're for it. We're for the recovery of imperiled species."


TR was a republican. He set up the national parks service. I've never been enviornmentally active, but I grew up in Mississippi which is a beautiful state. I used to hunt, fish & hike before my illnesses got me down and I have always been for conservation.

I've always felt government should be bussiness friendly as well. Friendly is one thing. On your back with your legs spread for all comers, and a tip jar on the nightstand is quite another. I am begining to believe Bush is another Warren G. harding, a man who never learned how to say no.

The pandering to the interests of big bussiness has just become insane. I am sick of hearing about how business will regulate it'self or privitization will help.

The administration is either idealisticly naive to the point of wishful thinking or they are duplicitously selling out on alevel that can only be described as mind boggling.

-Colly

 

[cheerful_deviant]

The pandering to the interests of big bussiness has just become insane. I am sick of hearing about how business will regulate it'self or privitization will help.

The administration is either idealisticly naive to the point of wishful thinking or they are duplicitously selling out on alevel that can only be described as mind boggling.

-Colly

Just another case of the current administration's sell out to big buisness at the expence of the environment, public citizens and just about everything else.

The idea that big buisnesses will regulate themselves is so rediculous that it is hardly even worth mentioning. Anyone with any common sence at all can tell you that this just will not happen. Privatization will only make it worse. Companies are concerned with production and proifit, nothing else. Executives are looking fot their huge paychecks and the shareholders are looking to cash in.

The current administration isn't naive, they are quite aware of what they are doing. But Georgie Boy is from Texas and Big Buisness owns Texas. I read recently that his relection campaign "war chest" just hit $218 million, where do you think that all came from? It sure as hell didn't come from a White House bake sale.

Face the facts folks, this country has been sold, and Big Buisness is holding the pink slip.

CD

 

[pop_54]

We are very eco friendly over here... as soon as a piece of green field or woodland becomes available... a preservation order is clamped on it to conserve wildlife etc... Until such time as a fat bastard developer turns up with a pocket full of wedge... then they build a thousand houses on it.... Then the new yuppie townie type residents call in the pest control officer cos the birds are shitting all over their new roof tiles... they kill off all the birds to prevent this.... I never quite worked out how many species this actually preserves.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

.... Then the new yuppie townie type residents call in the pest control officer cos the birds are shitting all over their new roof tiles... they kill off all the birds to prevent this....

Pity the birds can't call in a pest control officer to kill off the yuppies because they're building all their shit under where the bird's crap.

 

[shereads]

Colleen, I was wrong. You aren't a closet Democrat, you're a Commie eco-terrorist.



Do you see now why I hate these bastards? Bush has the worst environmental record of any president since XXXXn since the one who appointed James Watt as Interior Secretary.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is approving only about one of every two acres that federal biologists propose setting aside to help vanishing species recover.

Between 2001 and 2003, the government cut 42 million acres from plans to create nearly 83 million acres of critical habitat for threatened and endangered species, a National Wildlife Federation study found.

The administration also more often cited economic reasons to justify decisions to reduce acreage. In 2001, that rationale was used to trim about 1 percent of the acreage; by 2003, that had risen to 69 percent.

The federation contends the administration is trying to undermine the Endangered Species Act. That conclusion is based on the group's interpretation of a study, provided to The Associated Press, of all critical habitat plans prepared during the Bush administration by the Interior Department's Fish and Wildlife Service and the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

The government is required by law to set aside areas that dwindling species need to survive and recover.

John Kostyack, the group's senior counsel, noted a budget office memo regarding a 2002 plan for designating critical habitat for the Topeka shiner, an endangered minnow.

The memo says "the benefits ... are not relevant to the policy decision at hand" — how much land should be set aside in Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota.

In a second example, environmental groups sued the government over a decision to cut to 740,000 acres the nearly 1.7 million acres first proposed in California for protecting seasonal ponds that support 15 species of rare plants and tiny shrimp.

The government had estimated the designation could cost developers $1.3 billion over 20 years for additional consultant fees and modifications to projects. Kostyack said some counties had said they would have no added costs for protecting species.

Kostyack's group said not enough consideration is given to the benefits of protecting species, which include their uses in recreation, science, water and soil quality, and climate.

Even with the scaled-down plan, White House budget office spokesman Chad Colton said the administration was designating a significant amount of critical habitat.

Environmentalists say their suits are meant to force the government to do its job. Administration and industry officials say the legal action is meant to stop development.

The Interior Department has $12 million for its endangered species listing program on public lands and in some marine areas. It asked Congress starting in 1997 to cap the amount for critical habitat, now at $9 million, so environmentalists could not dictate priorities.

In an interview Wednesday, Manson said the administration is only putting to use a part of the law that says critical habitat can be excluded if the economic or other benefits of protecting species do not outweigh the costs.

Manson said the administration has used economic analyses to exclude critical habitat far more than in previous years because "critical habitat provides little additional benefit to species over and above" those when a species is designated as threatened or endangered.

He said that step leads the government to spend hundreds of millions through voluntary programs involving private landowners and farmers.

"All of those acres ... have done far more good than critical habitat, because those are actively managed parcels," he said. "The point is not that there's anything wrong with habitat; we're for it. We're for the recovery of imperiled species."


TR was a republican. He set up the national parks service. I've never been enviornmentally active, but I grew up in Mississippi which is a beautiful state. I used to hunt, fish & hike before my illnesses got me down and I have always been for conservation.

I've always felt government should be bussiness friendly as well. Friendly is one thing. On your back with your legs spread for all comers, and a tip jar on the nightstand is quite another. I am begining to believe Bush is another Warren G. harding, a man who never learned how to say no.

The pandering to the interests of big bussiness has just become insane. I am sick of hearing about how business will regulate it'self or privitization will help.

The administration is either idealisticly naive to the point of wishful thinking or they are duplicitously selling out on alevel that can only be described as mind boggling.

-Colly

 

[SummerMorning]

It's not naive, it's dogma - an unquestioned article of faith, that the market can, must and will do the best for all mankind.

This, of course, is quite silly.

The market is the most efficient way of creating profit currently known to man. Profit ($$$) has nothing whatsoever to do with quality of life, welfare, the environment, or mankind for that matter.

Point in case: the income disparity.

 

[shereads]

Why Colleen's instinct tells her to become an eco-nut:

A healthy economy can't exist without a healthy environment. Note, I didn't say a "growing" economy can't exist; growth doesn't require anything other than a place to be. But living on a peninsula surrounded by salt water (or an island, like Britain) you get to witness the panic that begins to set in when uncontrolled development and under-regulated use of resources begin to backfire, by destroying people's livelihoods.

Not all environmental activists are sensitive impractical poet-types. Many if not most of them are just forward-thinking people who know the science, foresee the consequences, and have enough respect for future generations that they are willing to "fight the long defeat," in the words of a Tolkien character whose name I can't recall.

The eco-nuts I know are turning out to have been the sane ones, now that it's largely too late to fix the damage they tried to prevent. It will eventually happen everywhere, but it happens faster on a peninsula. Places like South Florida are the canary in the land mine, the indicator of what's to come when the world is finally crowded enough to make the rest of you experience what is happening here now. In places whose borders aren't quite so evident, it might take a century to accomplish what we've done to South Florida in a couple of decades, but it will happen. The time to worry about it is now, or better yet fifty years ago. Otherwise, you get the Bush administration saying, "Yes, it turns out that global warming is a reality, but it's too late to do anything about it."

Here's just one example of how free-market nuts turn into eco-nuts, once its too late to make a difference:

Sports fishermen and commercial fishing operations used to stand rock-solid against environmental regulation. When sports fishermen began to see the effects of overfishing on their own good time, they wanted commercial fishing regulated, but the commercial fishing industry used their clout to fight off overregulation by these eco-nuts in their sport fishing boats.

A decade or so later, they're all suffering from reduced water quality, for which they rightly blame rampant development and the draining of the Everglades. The developers are adamantly opposed to restricted growth, and exert significant influence as they must to fight off those eco-nuts in the fishing industry. State government is more than happy to leave regulation in the hands of local government, which wants development to continue unabated because that's how it adds to its tax base.

A growing tax base, of course, is essential in the losing battle to pay for the effects of overdevelopment: new schools, fresh water, more highways. Technically,Florida law requires development to pay its own way and not pass these costs along to the taxpayer. But if that happened, they'd have to raise the price of the homes they build, and that would mean fewer people, and that would reduce the tax base.

See?

To open land to development in South Florida, it's only necessary to show that the land is no longer pristine and therefore is unsuitable to set aside as an ecologically sensitive land parcel. When environmentalists fought this loophole, they were accused of being against farming. What they foresaw is what happened: farm a parcel of land just long enough to disqualify it as an ecologically sensitive parcel, and you can get rich overnight selling the farm to a developer.

(There's a faster way to render undeveloped land unsuitable for protection: bulldoze the trees. This is sometimes done when a court case seems to be leaning in the direction of protecting a valuable piece of land. In the case of Biscayne National Park, it was done AFTER the court decided in favor of making Elliot Key part of the park. There is a straight line, the width of a bulldozer, down the center of the forest on Elliot Key, which was bulldozed down to the limestone so that no trees will grow there for a few centuries, if ever. It's called "Spite Row." That's where South Florida gets the nickname, "land of the midnight bulldozers.)

Meanwhile, if you live and work in South Florida in any capacity, including as a developer, you're being subsidized by the tourism industry which is everyone's bread and butter.

Unfortunately, tourism in South Florida and the Keys is now subject to a little thing called "fecal counts" which measure the amount of untreated sewage in our water, and result in the closing of beaches which are posted with signs saying, "Closed for FECAL CONTAMINATION."

Whoever thought of those signs must have been an eco-nut, right? Wrong, it's worse. He was probably a lawyer.Because you can bet that local and state governments would have fought the use of fecal counts to close beaches, fought it to the last open skin sore, if not for the fear of lawsuits. Science having demonstrated a significant health risk to human beings who swim in contaminated water, what's needed here is either:

(a) Clean water? Of course not. That would require having sewage treatment capacity to match the pace of development, which would mean that government either has to raise our taxes to build new treatment plants, or enforce the existing laws which theoretically require development to pay its own way. If that happened, developers would have to raise the price of the houses they build, and that would slow the pace of growth. Being anti-growth is the same, in Florida, as being pro-Fidel. (And don't even mention messing with the federally subsidized sugar industry and the run-off of fertilizer from their farms. Sugar is an essential food for the health of America's children. Moreover, the Fanjul Brothers who own most of it are stalwart in the fight to keep Castro from attacking Tallahassee.)

(b) Reducing water standards to allow higher fecal counts? Been there, tried that. Damn scientists insist that bad things might happen to people who swim in untreated human waste, and if they can prove it was the state's fault for not warning them, they might sue.

(c) Tort reform? Bingo. If you guessed tort reform as the solution to the problem, you fall on the same end of the Short-Sighteness & Greed Spectrum as the anti-regulation, pro-growth, pro-free-market, Republican-dominated Florida legislature, for whom Tort Reform is the only solution worth considering to just about any problem, from mad doctors to eco-nuts with pro-bono lawyers, who make pests of themselves by suing to force the state to enforce its own laws.

Edited to add: When environmental groups sue to stop logging or mining or a residential development because it threatens the Lesser SlugSnail, it's not because they're so nuts that they think the world can't survive without the Lesser SlugSnails. It's because the Federal Endangered Species act is the only tool they have, when government is so pro-industry and pro-growth that the quality of our air, our water, and our surroundings are not an issue. Lawsuits talk. Reason doesn't.

 

[Guest]

I'm just hear to praise Pops for doing his bit for parrots (especially dead ones).

Perdita

 

[dr_mabeuse]

This is an example of why some of us have been screaming about this administration. It goes way beyond mere partisan politics and differing agendas. These people are out of control, and use misrepresentation and politics to hide what they’re doing, and what they’re doing is often truly terrible.

Where I live the environment has already been pretty well screwed over, and so it’s not that big an issue. But I’m still a part of the scientific community, and I can say that scientists are up in arms about the way science and the truth have been sacrificed at the altar of political expedience in this administration. Bush has put politicians and sympathetic fringe figures in charge of important scientific committees whose findings effect the environment and public health. They’ve deliberately distorted, misrepresented, or simply repressed scientific findings that they object too, and scientists are outraged.

You know, if you want to argue about what studies mean, that’s one thing. But when you deliberately lie and distort the facts to suit your political purposes, that’s another thing entirely. This administration has become like a Christian Taliban, running things by executive fiat. They’ve already destroyed 20 years of American diplomacy, destroyed the reputation of the American military, and have seriously fucked over the integrity of governmental science. I’ve seen nothing like this in my lifetime.

---dr.M.

 

[rgraham666]

All ya gotta do is phrase conservation in a way these yahoos can understand.

No enviroment = No people. No people=no markets. No markets=no money.

 

[amicus]

Oh, Goody! Another Liberal/green myth to puncture.

The eyes of Amicus gleam in anticipation.

Amicus Veritas...

 

[SummerMorning]

There is no truth Amicus...

*sigh*

 

[pop_54]

I'm just hear to praise Pops for doing his bit for parrots (especially dead ones).

Perdita

It's not dead madam... it's resting... lovely plumage though

Lo gorgeous lady *P*

 

[pop_54]

There is no truth Amicus...

*sigh*

The truth is out there.... cue the space ship and the guy in a silver suit... Oh and some mush with a fag in his mouth... No! No! you crazy American's, not sucking a queer off, smoking!!!

 

[smutpen]

It's not dead madam... it's resting... lovely plumage though

Lo gorgeous lady *P*

Maybe it's pining for the fjords...


"It's not pining, it's passed on. This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot." -MP

 

[Wildcard Ky]

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is approving only about one of every two acres that federal biologists propose setting aside to help vanishing species recover.

In a second example, environmental groups sued the government over a decision to cut to 740,000 acres the nearly 1.7 million acres first proposed in California for protecting seasonal ponds that support 15 species of rare plants and tiny shrimp.



-Colly

I'm very pro eco, I believe in saving as much wildspace as possible. However, I quoted the one paragraph because it mentions that shrimp in California. The radical eco groups are behind that one. I've seen several stories over the years about that.

The shrimp in question is just like any other shrimp. It lives in water. Eco extremists have gotten tens of thousands of acres of desert, and high desert protected under the auspices of this shrimp. A land owner in Northern Cali wanted to start a vineyard.
He was setting up to do the irrigation work when he was stopped by the gov't. Even though the land was so dry that he was going to have to set up irrigation for his vineyard, he wasn't allowed to touch the land because of this shrimp. Some group had his land included in the shrimp protection area, even though there weren't any of these shrimp anywhere close to his land.

Last I heard he was still sitting on a piece of high desert land that he couldn't do anything with because it would hurt the endangered shrimp that weren't there.

 

[cheerful_deviant]

Oh and some mush with a fag in his mouth... No! No! you crazy American's, not sucking a queer off, smoking!!!

LOL

 

[amicus]

http://www.mtmultipleuse.org/esahistory.htm

Environmentalism

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is the mechanism by which the changes are occurring. In this paper, I will explore the history of the Act itself and the social and philosophical ideologies which precipitated it. I will focus on the movements and events of the 1960’s which fostered the Act, and also look at some of the modern aspects.

The environmental movement finds its roots in the 19th century. In 1854, Henry David Thoreau published Walden, a book about living simple in a natural setting. During the same time period, Ralph Waldo Emerson began writing about nature. In the summer of 1868, John Muir moved to the Yosemite Valley in California. At first, he worked as a shepherd and later at a sawmill, but his true passion was the wilds of Yosemite. He would spend weeks hiking through the mountains. In time he became convinced that nature had inherent value of its own and needed to be set aside, put off-limits from the destructiveness of man. Together with Robert Underwood Johnson, he successfully lobbied Congress for the creation of a preserve for Yosemite, and in 1890 Yosemite National Park was born. Shortly thereafter, Johnson and Muir officially joined forces to create the Sierra Club, one of the first environmental groups and progenitor of many modern organizations (Weiss).

Gifford Pinchot returned to America in 1890 from France, where he had been studying forestry. He was shocked to see the inefficient abuse of national resources in the U.S. He began to work in the forest industry, and due to his training and experience, he quickly advanced. In 1898 he became the head of the Division of Forestry. When President Theodore Roosevelt created the US Forest Service in 1905, he named Pinchot, whom he personally knew, Chief Forester (Dowie 16). Pinchot used the knowledge he had gained in France to set up a system of management for natural resources that focused on selective harvest, rather than indiscriminate plunder. Large portions of land (hundreds of millions of acres) were brought under public ownership and made into National Forests, which the Forest Service managed.

Pinchot and Muir began two subgroups of the environmental movement: conservation and preservation, respectively. Pinchot advocated a "wise use" policy (Dowie 16), where natural resources were used but not abused. Muir supported a more restrictive strategy: setting up national preserves isolated from all human activity. Both men were friends with President Roosevelt, and both concepts are visible in the policies of the Roosevelt Administration. Conservation versus preservation is one of the central issues in the environmental debate today.
The next major player in the development of the movement was Aldo Leopold. Leopold began his career with the US Forest Service, where he worked for 19 years. After leaving the Forest Service, he began to work in game management. A Sand County Almanac, published one year after his death in 1948, was a collection of his essays detailing his observations of the natural world around him (The Aldo Leopold Foundation). It explored the complex relationship between organisms and their environment. Aldo Leopold introduced the third branch of the environmental movement, ecology, which focused more on the scientific aspects of the natural world.

Rachel Carson published her revolutionary work, Silent Spring, in 1962. Carson was a scientist and writer who began her career with the US Bureau of Fisheries and rose to the position of Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Much of her earlier work pertained to the sea. Carson became aware of the problems posed by pesticides, and described their danger in Silent Spring. The book received a great deal of attention and caused much controversy, especially within the chemical industry. President John Kennedy set up a commission to study pesticides, resulting in a ban on DDT in 1972 (Rachel Carson).

In response to the sudden barrage of information about the threats to the environment, many people began to leave main-stream society and seek a living close to nature. They formed the back-to-the-land movement, which was a subset to the counterculture that was forming at the same time. Back-to-the-landers moved to the countryside, where they settled in communes or on homesteads. Here they attempted to produce everything they needed for survival, from food to shelter to clothing. They operated small farms, tended gardens, and raised their own livestock.

There were three main reasons that most people went back to the land. The first was a feeling of disenchantment with modern society. They had had enough of the rules and policies of the "establishment," such as the lifestyle of consumerism, the Vietnam War, racial prejudice, poverty, and many other social issues that they attributed to their parents’ generation. Wanting no part in such a society, they decided to "tune in, turn on, and drop out" (Anderson 96).

The environment and its apparent poor health were the second reason back-to-the-landers chose to leave main-stream society and what separated them from the rest of the counterculture. These people were not content to live on the fringe of society, satisfying their desires with sex and drugs while ignoring the misdeeds of the civilization all around them; they wanted to live in such a way that they were in harmony with the earth. Their farms did not use pesticides, they used automobiles rarely or not at all, and they did not purchase consumer goods that produced non-biodegradable waste.

The third reason for going back to the land was spiritual. As the environmental crisis was unfolding, many of the people who later joined the movement sought more information on the subject from previous writers. They read Thoreau "describe a spiritual communion with the natural world. . ." (Walden Express). Leopold wrote of nature’s song:

"To hear even a few notes of it you must first live here for a long time, and you must know the speech of hills and rivers. . . . Then you may hear it—a vast pulsing harmony—its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries." (Leopold 149)

Both writers tended to romanticize their subjects. The spiritualism they portrayed was more of an inner awakening on the part of the observer than a literal worship of nature.

Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism did incorporate such worship. These religions were becoming popular in the American counterculture during the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s, largely due to their influence on music. Many bands, even the Beatles, were beginning to experiment with Eastern thought. Such concepts as self-denial were popular among anti-society hippies. Also, abstract thinking about the interconnectedness of the universe went well with marijuana and LSD.

Hinduism and Buddhism teach the sacredness of nature. Both are based on the concept of reincarnation, a "cycle of life, death, and rebirth" (Gregg 52). Hinduism taught that the environment is sacred, because of the "intertwining of the natural world and the divine. . ." (Ibid. 50). In Buddhism, there is an interdependence of all life forms. Everything is, "in essence," one with the rest of the universe (Ibid. 55).

The religions of Native American cultures were also influential on the back-to-the-land movement. The American Indian Movement was receiving a great deal of publicity during the late ‘60’s, and this attracted the attentions of the back-to-the-landers just as environmental topics did. Indian beliefs generally held that everything had a spirit, from the rocks to the trees to the animals. All animals were brothers to the Indians. The concept of living close to the land but not harming it was modeled from the Native American lifestyle.
` `

Excerpts from the link posted above.

You will note the long time involvement of a mixture of ‘activist’ groups in the culture. Please also note the date of 1973 again singled out as a year of great change in American cultural history.

This entire movement has often been described as the ‘anti industrial revolution’, a loose coordination of many groups in opposition to the free market place economy of the United States and basically opposed to private ownership of land and property rights.

The increasing political influence of these groups has greatly influenced Congress and many laws were created to enact the wishes of these groups.

The result of the restrictions and prohibitions placed on resource usage, has continually raised the cost of living for the average citizen, increased the cost of building and owning a home and purchasing machinery for transportation and agricultural development.

The reasons for this ‘anti-modern, return to the land’ mantra, will be further explored.

Amicus Veritas

 

[shereads]

It's not dead madam... it's resting... lovely plumage though

It's a Norwegian Blue, isn't it? It must be pining for the fjords.

 

[shereads]

What this thread needs is a crazy person to wander in and type a lot of random multisyllabic words connected with plenty of elipses. Then we'd have some fun! If only ami...No, maybe not. He's too crazy. And if the ward supervisor ever finds out he's been using her computer and hoarding his meds, she might blame us.

It's just as well he's on Ignore. Once he turned out to be a racist, he wasn't that funny anymore.

 

[amicus]

http://environmentalism.aynrand.org/environ.shtml//environmentalism.aynrand.org/environ.shtml
If environmentalists succeed, they will make human life impossible.

Earth Day Celebrates

Hatred of Man
By Michael S. Berliner, Ph.D

Earth Day approaches, and with it a grave danger faces mankind. The danger is not from acid rain, global warming, smog, or the logging of rain forests, as environmentalists would have us believe. The danger to mankind is from environmentalism.

The fundamental goal of environmentalists is not clean air and clean water; rather it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization. Their goal is not the advancement of human health, human happiness, and human life; rather it is a subhuman world where “nature” is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion.

In a nation founded on the pioneer spirit, they have made “development” an evil word. They inhibit or prohibit the development of Alaskan oil, offshore drilling, nuclear power — and every other practical form of energy. Housing, commerce, and jobs are sacrificed to spotted owls and snail darters. Medical research is sacrificed to the “rights” of mice. Logging is sacrificed to the “rights” of trees. No instance of the progress which brought man out of the cave is safe from the onslaught of those “protecting” the environment from man, whom they consider a rapist and despoiler by his very essence.

Nature, they insist, has “intrinsic value,” to be revered for its own sake, irrespective of any benefit to man. As a consequence, man is to be prohibited from using nature for his own ends. Since nature supposedly has value and goodness in itself, any human action which changes the environment is necessarily immoral. Of course, environmentalists invoke the doctrine of intrinsic value not against wolves that eat sheep or beavers that gnaw trees; they invoke it only against man, only when man wants something.

The ideal world of environmentalists is not twentieth century Western civilization; it is the Garden of Eden, a world with no human intervention in nature, a world without innovation or change, a world without effort, a world where survival is somehow guaranteed, a world where man has mystically merged with the “environment.” Had the environmentalist mentality prevailed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we would have had no Industrial Revolution, a situation environmentalists would cheer — at least those few who might have managed to survive without the life-saving benefits of modern science and technology.

The expressed goal of environmentalism is to prevent man from changing his environment, from intruding on nature. That is why environmentalism is fundamentally anti-man. Intrusion is necessary for human survival. Only by intrusion can man avoid pestilence and famine. Only by intrusion can man control his life and project long-range goals. Intrusion improves the environment, if by “environment” one means the surroundings of man — the external material conditions of human life. Intrusion is a requirement of human nature. But in the environmentalists’ paean to “Nature,” human nature is omitted. For the environmentalists, the “natural” world is a world without man.

Man has no legitimate needs, but trees, ponds and bacteria somehow do.

They don’t mean it? Heed the words of the consistent environmentalists. “The ending of the human epoch on Earth,” writes philosopher Paul Taylor in Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics, “would most likely be greeted with a hearty ‘Good riddance!’ ” In a glowing review of Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature, biologist David M. Graber writes (Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1989): “Human happiness [is] not as important as a wild and healthy planet....Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.” Such is the naked essence of environmentalism: it mourns the death of one whale or tree but actually welcomes the death of billions of people. A more malevolent, man-hating philosophy is unimaginable.

The guiding principle of environmentalism is self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of longer lives, healthier lives, more prosperous lives, more enjoyable lives, i.e., the sacrifice of human lives. But an individual is not born in servitude. He has a moral right to live his own life for his own sake. He has no duty to sacrifice it to the needs of others and certainly not to the “needs” of the non-human.

To save mankind from environmentalism, what’s needed is not the appeasing, compromising approach of those who urge a “balance” between the needs of man and the “needs” of the environment. To save mankind requires the wholesale rejection of environmentalism as hatred of science, technology, progress, and human life. To save mankind requires the return to a philosophy of reason and individualism, a philosophy which makes life on earth possible.

http://environmentalism.aynrand.org/environ.shtml

Michael Berliner is executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, California.

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For those who believe in 'Environmentalism' as others 'believe' in God, perhaps you might be pleased to know that there are other points of view.

amicus

 

[amicus]

I could not decide between, 'pussies' or 'pussy's' or even 'twats', as I searched for a suitable nomenclature to describe the absence of response.

I am quite content with, 'ignore'...chuckles, after having been evicerated with Global warming, Greenhouse effect, Ozone depletion, and 'gay' genes, the last thing you needed was to learn that your 'environmentalist' facade, was just that, a 'facade' covering the true nature of contemporary 'liberals'

I understand your reluctance to engage in serious debate on contentious issues, you simply have no case to expound.

Again, it is not for the handfull, but those who read and do not participate, that I expose the total bankruptcy of the liberal left.

They see that you have no response and they understand that you are but just a shadow, in the Platonic sense, on a cave wall in a long ago time of antiquity that somehow still survives.

Colly, I am really disappointed in you.

I must return to editing the 'Feminine Mistake', I know you await with bated breath.

amicus, the amicable troll....