please please please let me get what i want
Finally got around to reading a rather well-written AP piece Bob Whitson linked to about Richard Pombo's plan to overhaul the Endangered Species Act, which I wrote about over the summer (For those of you who stopped collecting Topps' Heroes of The Right Wing trading cards, Pombo's a Wise Use pin-up who just so happens to be the Bush Admin/DeLay Machine's headman on the House Resources Committee, which determines policy on practically everything that's green in America).
It's not clear why committee Dems want to do a deal on the the Pombo Bill, now officially known as Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act (TESRA) of 2005; introducing legislation to "reform" the ESA was like a rite of spring with Pombo before being selected for the Resources chairmanship: perhaps liberal members have a more Zen take on politicking, the reed that bends and all that. But Pombo's made no secret of his intentions regarding the ESA, and I can only guess that trying to get some compromise on a bill that very well may sail through the House would be the only reason they might be throwing in with the "let's fix it" crowd.
Here's the rub, though - "fixing" the ESA, at least the kind of fixes we're liable to get from Rep. Pombo and others means merely painting the ESA with a reductionist brush: what's vogue now is efficiency, that what the ESA needs is some strict bookkeeping, that the science used in determining what gets put on ESA lists (which also includes "threatened" species and habitat, one peg below endangered) is too far-flung and messy - too many animals on the list, too few not unendangered (the ESA's fault entirely, not developers or corrupt pols or any of the myriad reasons animals are endangered in the first place), and what's a habitat anyway (one of the compromises the Dems are apparently offering is to ditch the endangered habitat, though it's probably important to note that habitats are habitats because things inhabit them).
More than anything, this is should be considered a philosophical crisis, something more to do with bureaucratic worldview: It's worth noting that legislative oversight for the ESA begins with the House Resources committee. It's incumbent upon enviros to ask, then, just how, exactly, do we think of our nation's wildlife? Is a species of toad or bird a "resource," like cattle or other farm animals? Unique grasses and plants the very same as wheat and corn? Indeed, shouldn't we expect our government to safeguard our "resources," rather than let them be exploited or frittered away for more strip malls and gated communities?
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