N80 George,
By your way of looking at things, any one thing said that is a generalization with an exception means it is all just wrong. You said small pox was virus we eliminated, you were wrong. You generalized and then rationalized your wrongness. Too bad you don't hold yourself to your own standards. I will stand by my generalization about liberals, today's conservatives, and conservation because it is true far more often than not.
Skeptics blast study making energy claims | The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram
This article, current, not resting on past laurels of conservatives gone by, is a case in point. These are not liberals who fund fictitious studies and then try to pass them off as something they are not to legislators all over the country. Since you are not equipped to identify harm, I am sure you are willing to live with the consequences because Solyndra did not succeed as an investment in green energy. That is the way your logic works, by the way. You don't care that only 8% of the energy projects funded by stimulus monies through the DOE failed, because only one matters to you apparently.
Here are some more conservatives at work:
200 Groups Object to Lead-poisoning Provision in Sportsmen's Bill
“Why would the Senate bow to the National Rifle Association’s anti-science views on lead poisoning and pass a special-interest legal exemption to promote further lead poisoning?” said Snape. “The amendment offered by Senator Boxer would actually establish a moratorium on any regulation of lead in ammunition or fishing sinkers until federal health and environment agencies prepare an objective study that all Americans could trust.”
Did you read the about the laws that outlawed market hunting, laws about bag limits? Those were huge contributors to the restoration of game that had been decimated by earlier people who also thought they understood nature and God.
The eastern forests were largely clear cut which made it difficult for many animals to survive, and caused massive erosion limiting the ability for natural reforestation. Many of New England's rivers have still not fully recovered from the early logging practices. What we are really talking about is over-hunting coupled with extreme habitat loss. The rivers are still being rebuilt and stocked where native fish populations formerly existed. I don't take anything away from orgs like Trout Unlimited in those efforts, but I don't see that as a triumph of conservatism either. To make those programs work, regulations about what can and can't be done in a river are necessary. Who would be in the way of that regulation? A liberal? Generally not, George.
It was a NH man in the logging industry who finally realized what had to be done, and that began the basis for healing the forests. A deer herd is naturally going to benefit from lots of new growth forest. They still do today in newly harvested areas. The deer would have found their way back to that territory and thrived with or without help. It's certainly nice that groups promoted it and perhaps accelerated the process, but I doubt their motives were entirely altruistic.
If you truly cannot define harm from regulated permitted activities, here is an idea: Get your drinking water downstream from some mine tailings, give some to your family, you can have all the dead fish to eat also, you will want for nothing. Or, go hunting in the bottom of an open pit mine, there's no harm there right? You are making silly statements about harm and no harm, Exxon and Sierra.
Of course there is no such thing as a free lunch, or resources without harm. But there are certainly better choices, and choices that do not downstream the costs and liabilities of poor choices by greedy people. Any time an effort is made to put real monetary values on those poor choices, it is generally one of today's conservatives who will fight it because it gets in the way of short-term profits.
Where would Ducks Unlimited be without the work of many biologists and environmentalists? Environmentalist is pretty much a dirty word to today's conservatives, you see it here in this forum: "the enviros" did this or that. "The EPA is destroying the country." Generally speaking, these are today's conservatives. Do you really think the Clean Water Act, signed by Nixon, could pass in today's House of Representatives? Who loves to hate Rachael Carson? You cannot restore and protect wildlife without knowledge.
I certainly don't agree with everything any liberal says or does, but in general, I know that I disagree with most of what today's (self-described) conservatives are promoting.
George, you are defending the indefensible, and calling on God isn't going to change that.
