Trump Plans to Destroy Endangered Species Act

[real Cannabis calm]

U.S. Significantly Weakens Endangered Species Act
By Lisa Friedman
Aug 12, 2019


WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Monday announced that it would change the way the Endangered Species Act is applied, significantly weakening the nation’s bedrock conservation law and making it harder to protect wildlife from the multiple threats posed by climate change.



A bald eagle, one of the Endangered Species Act’s success stories, near Castle Dale, Utah.
photograph by Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

The new rules would make it easier to remove a species from the endangered list and weaken protections for threatened species, the classification one step below endangered. And, for the first time, regulators would be allowed to conduct economic assessments — for instance, estimating lost revenue from a prohibition on logging in a critical habitat — when deciding whether a species warrants protection.

Critically, the changes would also make it more difficult for regulators to factor in the effects of climate change on wildlife when making those decisions because those threats tend to be decades away, not immediate.

Critically, the changes would also make it more difficult for regulators to factor in the effects of climate change on wildlife when making those decisions because those threats tend to be decades away, not immediate.

Over all, the revised rules appear very likely to clear the way for new mining, oil and gas drilling, and development in areas where protected species live. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/12/climate/endangered-species-act-changes.html?te=1&nl=morning-briefing&emc=edit_NN_p_20190813

[Beringia]

1. This issue is like our modern day Scope's Trial

The wealthy who want to eat up the world want to shut down the science of climate change dictating government policy.

[real Cannabis calm]

4. Trump media-strategy slightly resembles the Scope's Monkey Trial...

It took public attention away from increasing power of gigantic corporations, owned by the ultra-wealthy.

The economy grew 42 percent during the 1920s. The United States produced nearly half the world's output. That's because World War I destroyed most of Europe. New construction almost doubled, from $6.7 billion to $10.1 billion. Aside from the economic recession of 1920-21, where by some estimates unemployment rose to 11.7 percent, for the most part unemployment in the 1920s never rose above the natural rate of around 4 percent.

Average income rose from $6,460 to $8,016 per person. But this prosperity wasn't distributed evenly. In 1922, the top 1 percent of the population received 13.4 percent of total income. By 1929, it earned 14.5 percent.

On average, the stock market increased in value by 20 percent a year. It began rising in 1924. The number of shares traded doubled to 5 million per day.

One reason for the boom was because of financial innovations. Stockbrokers began allowing customers to buy stocks "on margin." Brokers would lend 80-90 percent of the price of the stock. Investors only needed to put down 10-20 percent. If the stock price went up, they became millionaires. This same innovation became a weakness when stock prices fell during the 1929 stock market crash. https://www.thebalance.com/roaring-twenties-4060511

The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case in July 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he purposely incriminated himself so that the case could have a defendant.

Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 (equivalent to $1,400 in 2018), but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. The trial served its purpose of drawing intense national publicity, as national reporters flocked to Dayton to cover the big-name lawyers who had agreed to represent each side. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes. The trial publicized the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy, which set Modernists, who said evolution was not inconsistent with religion, against Fundamentalists, who said the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The case was thus seen as both a theological contest and a trial on whether modern science should be taught in schools.

[bdamomma]

2. I just made a donation

to the Defenders of Wildlife fund. As long as I am doing something to help.

[real Cannabis calm]

6. Thanks! Responsible people do what they can to make the world a better place...

Being on a fixed income, I'll just keep trying to publicize these very real problems. Renewable resources are available; and using them would alleviate or reduce problems the Opening Post describes, along with others, like health risks to ALL humans. But, big corporations and their political puppets are so short-sighted that they cannot see the forest for the trees, until there are no more forests or trees.

If these little wolf-puppies could write, they would thank you for your generosity too:

[yonder]

3. Perhaps a poor analogy but something like this?

"Critically, the changes would also make it more difficult for regulators to factor in the effects of heavy alcohol use on liver/mental health when making those decisions because those threats tend to be decades away, not immediate."

We don't need no steenkin' science. So, shove it all down the road, we'll fix it later. Not.

This is a friggin abomination and we're looking at you Mulvaney/Miller.

[real Cannabis calm]

7. Here's some current reality, put to appropriate music:

Does this highly intelligent endangered species - locked away in a zoo - look happy?



Lyrics and especially the video take on profound meaning

Fake people deny or ignore climate change and focus on hot news, like Epstein: But, what is humanity's eventual fate?

[lpbk2713]

5. Hasn't Trump fucked up enough of our world yet?

Stay away from endangered species.

[real Cannabis calm]

8. Big corporations and toadies, like Trump don't want us focused on climate change.

Like mass-media, we are supposed to focus on Epstein and illegal aliens.