I miss Nixon.
Seriously.
How about that? OMG.
That’s how bad things are. The GOP and their disastrous leader are mounting an assault on our animals, our skies, our waters, our land, and of course on the American people. Why I have no idea. It makes no sense. The rest of the world knows that fossil fuels, while useful in the short term, must be left behind to save the planet. And we realize that ecosystems, irreplaceable and intricately connected, cannot be replaced once destroyed.
Many of us remember the 1970’s when formerly crystalline air in places like Colorado became opaque and vile. People were poisoned by pollution, Lake Erie died and rivers burned, DDT crashed bird populations. You couldn’t see down the street in Los Angeles.
So, people, led by the Republicans, acted.
Now? Now — now they’ve tossed ANWR into their nihilistic enrich the rich tax bill and I will never forgive Lisa Murkowski for her treason. But she’s only one of an army of insane and vicious people who are assaulting the world and the most vulnerable people and animals in it, and who will doom us all if they have their way.
Here’s the author of the Endangered Species Act in Washington Post today,
Lee Talbot is professor of environmental science, international affairs and public policy at George Mason University. He is former head of Environmental Sciences for the Smithsonian Institution and former chief scientist on the President’s Council on Environmental Quality for presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
When President Richard Nixon asked my old boss at the Smithsonian Institution to loan me, then the institution’s head of environmental sciences, to the White House, I took on what may seem like an impossible task: write and help enact one of the country’s most important environmental laws. But I did, and the bill passed in a remarkably bipartisan way.
Now that law, the Endangered Species Act, is under vicious attack in Congress by anti-conservation zealots uninterested in working with their counterparts from the other side of the aisle.
Such is the state of our national affairs. The political climate makes it difficult to imagine a Republican president recruiting and encouraging a scientist to author progressive environmental legislation and help push it through Congress.
Bipartisanship! Imagine! What has happened to this country?
Anyway,
To date, the current Congress has introduced more than 63 bills that would weaken or gut the act. These efforts to undermine one of our bedrock environmental laws are entirely wrongheaded. The Endangered Species Act has saved 99 percent of all animals under its protection from extinction and has put hundreds more on the road to recovery. A report from the Center for Biological Diversity found that 85 percent of the North American birds listed under the Endangered Species Act have either increased in numbers or remained stable since being protected.
Please people — write, call, pester your Reps about this. It’s life or death, not just for the critters. From tiny worm to soaring eagle, from krill to whale, we’re all linked. It’s beyond me why the Trump Administration and its GOP enablers have embarked upon this destructive journey. But we must do everything we can to thwart their foul designs.
www.washingtonpost.com/...