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.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is the prime mover in restricting the supply of water to the farms of California’s hitherto fertile Central Valley, so severely that the farmers are going out of business with  dire consequences. Food production is dropping, and local unemployment is 40% and rising.

She is doing this in order, ludicrously, to save the hypomesus transpacificus, a wee fish that she and her fellow environmentalists apparently believe the world cannot conceivably do without. [See our post below, Smelt fishy, 2 September, 2009]

You would think, wouldn’t you, that Nancy Pelosi is passionate about preserving endangered species?

Yet, according to the American Spectator, she herself ‘circumvented ESA [Endangered Species Act] requirements for two endangered species on one of her own investment properties‘.

While hypocrisy so characterizes the left that no new instance of it can be surprising, the wickedness of what Pelosi is doing is too outrageous to be passed over with a sigh.

This is an abuse of power that should be punishable by law. Is it? If not, why not?

Mike Adams, at Townhall, while telling the story of one farmer’s ruin, points out more consequences of this scandal:

For nearly 20 years, California’s water availability has been precariously tied to decisions made by bureaucrats and politicians using the power of the Endangered Species Act. The effects of the far-reaching ESA could ultimately lead to the destruction of one of the most fertile valleys in the world, the reduction of the nation’s food supply and greater dependence on foreign food sources that don’t meet high U.S. food standards. The use of this overriding legislation that mandates federal control of our nation’s land and water is representative of the overall trend in this country of increased government intrusion into the lives of its citizens. That a statutory decree exists that can override human suffering in the service of preserving animal habitats is a serious indictment of our government’s commitment to preserve liberty and the American way of life. …

In August, fifty mayors from the San Joaquin Valley asked President Obama to come see the devastation first-hand. He refused. Obama previously denied a request to designate California as a federal disaster area. To do so would have acknowledged the fact that Obama’s radical environmental policies are, quite literally, scorched earth policies. Just go to the San Joachim Valley and you’ll see plenty of scorched earth.