The US does not need oil as much as it needs lizards. It does not need food as much as it needs millions of tiny smelt fish. It does not need timber as much as it needs owls. In a choice between reptiles, fish, birds on the one hand and people on the other, the scaly and feathered creatures carry more weight. They will be chosen. Their value is unquestionably greater than the value of people. That is the wisdom of America’s ruling elite.

Iconoclasts – a growing demographic – are asking why.

“Why preserve any species if it’s in the way of human prosperity?” they ask.

In sum, their demands are: Let the lizards perish – some could be made into luggage and shoes. Let the smelt disappear – no one will even notice it’s  gone. Let owls vanish into eternal night. And let America flourish, let its citizens (except Environmentalists) have all the energy they need, and be well fed and well housed – and, they add as a generous concession, be free to keep some lizards, fish, and owls as pets if they want to.

The only answer they have had so far is from Professor Doctor Babs Monitor of the Faculty of Ecology, Department of Reptile Studies, Masoch University, Vienna, who said:

“Gaia the Earth Goddess put these creatures there, and made the human species to care for them. If we fail in that duty there is no further purpose to our lives.”

From Canada Free Press, by Greg Halvorson:

You can’t make this up. First, a Spotted Owl destroyed the timber industry of the Pacific Northwest, then a minnow turned the most productive agricultural land in the world into a dustbowl, and now, as energy prices spike and the economy sputters, they’re going after Texas with a scurrilous reptile.

Specifically, the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard. That’s the latest more-important-than-people critter being used to lock-up resources in the name of planet Earth. The drilling moratorium didn’t cause enough pain, so onto the Endangered Species Act – known at the Sierra Club as “Ol’ Reliable” – to make certain Texas has lizard-filled poverty.

Lizard or livelihood? That’s what’s at stake. And the pro-poverty Earth Firsters stratifying government can’t have both. If it determines that the lizard is indeed endangered, the Fish and Wildlife Service will shut down the most productive oil counties in Texas, ban roads, and slow farm activity, as it “studies the ecosystem” for up to five years.

Here’s a bit of fun: energy environmentalists versus endangered species environmentalists.

From The Washington Post:

Workers atop mountain ridges are putting together 389-foot windmills with massive blades that will turn Appalachian breezes into energy. Retiree David Cowan is fighting to stop them.

Because of the bats.

Cowan, 72, a longtime caving fanatic who grew to love bats as he slithered through tunnels from Maine to Maui, is asking a federal judge in Maryland to halt construction of the Beech Ridge wind farm. The lawsuit pits Chicago-based Invenergy, a company that produces “green” energy, against environmentalists who say the cost to nature is too great.

The rare green vs. green case went to trial Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt.

It is the first court challenge to wind power under the Endangered Species Act …

At the heart of the Beech Ridge case is the Indiana bat, a brownish-gray creature that weighs about as much as three pennies and, wings outstretched, measures about eight inches. …

The case probably will come down to a battle of bat experts.There is no question turbines in other locations have killed tens of thousands of bats. Some strike blades. Others die from a condition known as barotrauma, similar to the bends that afflict divers. It occurs when the swirl of the blades creates low-pressure zones that cause the bats’ tiny lungs to hemorrhage. …

‘Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie, O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!’  – not the bat, but the environmentalist, torn between one moral imperative and another incompatible one.

How much longer will  people tolerate the Green dictatorship?  How much longer will we permit human sacrifice on the altar of Environmentalism, one of the most sentimental and stupid cults of all time?

Among their many cruel ukases,  the Green pontiffs ordain that corn be turned into an expensive fuel called Ethanol rather than let cheap fuel be pumped out of the earth and sea, because the pumping process might harm some beast of the field,  fowl of the air, or monster of the deep. The result? Multitudes in Africa go hungry.

And now the destruction of food in America, as explained in this report by Ben Shapiro at Townhall:

In December 2008, the federal government decided that Fresno County, a farming-rich area which provides half of America’s vegetables, no longer needed water. The farmers whose ancestors built the canals to irrigate the Central Valley have been totally cut off from their water supply, even though they’re still paying bills for it. Hundreds of acres of prime farming land lie fallow, crops withered and dead. All because the federal government thinks that smelt — tiny 5- to 7-centimeter fish — are more important than human beings. It seems that these annoying little creatures have been filleted by the water pumping systems necessary to make irrigation possible. They are now endangered. As the Fish and Wildlife Service put it, “it is the Service’s biological opinion [! an intelligent opinion would serve far better – JB] that the coordinated operations of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project … are likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the delta smelt.” In other words, all water supply must be shut down, lest the world lose the incomparably valuable smelt… The prices of staple foods will rise all over the country as farmers plow the sun-scorched crops into the ground.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s take on this tyrannous economic outrage:

California has a new endangered species on its hands in the San Joaquin Valley—farmers. Thanks to environmental regulations designed to protect the likes of the three-inch long delta smelt, one of America’s premier agricultural regions is suffering in a drought made worse by federal regulations.

The state’s water emergency is unfolding thanks to the latest mishandling of the Endangered Species Act. Last December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued what is known as a “biological opinion” imposing water reductions on the San Joaquin Valley and environs to safeguard the federally protected hypomesus transpacificus, a.k.a., the delta smelt. As a result, tens of billions of gallons of water from mountains east and north of Sacramento have been channelled away from farmers and into the ocean, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land fallow or scorched.

For this, Californians can thank the usual environmental suspects, er, lawyers. Last year’s government ruling was the result of a 2006 lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other outfits objecting to increased water pumping in the smelt vicinity. In June, things got even dustier when the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded that local salmon and steelhead also needed to be defended from the valley’s water pumps. Those additional restrictions will begin to effect pumping operations next year.

The result has already been devastating for the state’s farm economy. In the inland areas affected by the court-ordered water restrictions, the jobless rate has hit 14.3%, with some farming towns like Mendota seeing unemployment numbers near 40%. Statewide, the rate reached 11.6% in July, higher than it has been in 30 years…

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that he “doesn’t have the authority to turn on the pumps” that would supply the delta with water, or “otherwise, they would be on.” He did, however, have the ability to request intervention from the Department of Interior. Under a provision added to the Endangered Species Act in 1978 after the snail darter fiasco, a panel of seven cabinet officials known as a “God Squad” is able to intercede in economic emergencies, such as the one now parching California farmers. Despite a petition with more than 12,000 signers, Mr. Schwarzenegger has refused that remedy.

The issue now turns to the Obama Administration and the courts, though the farmers have so far found scant hope for relief from the White House. In June, the Administration denied the governor’s request to designate California a federal disaster area as a result of the drought conditions, which U.S. Drought Monitor currently lists as a “severe drought” in 43% of the state. Doing so would force the Administration to acknowledge awkward questions about the role its own environmental policies have played in scorching the Earth…

It’s like a bizarre story of some crazy nation that Gulliver happed upon in the course of his astonishing travels!