Bonfires and inanities
Posted by Richard on June 10, 2008
For the second time in four years, Seattle Parks and Recreation tried last week to ban beach bonfires (they’re already restricted to a handful of fire rings and require a permit). Why? To save the planet, of course:
According to a memo to the park board from the staff released Thursday, “The overall policy question for the Board is whether it is good policy for Seattle Parks to continue public beach fires when the carbon … emissions produced by thousands of beach fires per year contributes to global warming.”
Apparently, they’ve again backed down — at least for now. But this is yet another illustration of how immune to reason, logic, and reality the AGW true believers are. Banning bonfires to prevent global warming is only slightly less inane and absurd than banning pictures of guns on T-shirts to prevent plane hijackings.
Meanwhile in California, development is grinding to a halt and the Governator has declared an official statewide drought because of a water supply crisis. What caused this crisis? The New York Times story doesn’t mention the precipitating event until paragraph 18 (emphasis added):
Even more significant, a judge in federal district court last year issued a curtailment in pumping from the California Delta — where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers meet and provide water to roughly 25 million Californians — to protect a species of endangered smelt that were becoming trapped in the pumps. Those reductions, from December to June, cut back the state’s water reserves this winter by about one third, according to a consortium of state water boards.
So 25 million of California’s 38 million residents have their water supply threatened in order to prevent a two-inch fish from meeting its demise in a water pump instead of in the mouth of a larger fish. Unbelievable.
These Gaia-worshipping eco-nuts are at base profoundly anti-human. When a lightning-caused wildfire consumes thousands of acres of forest, they say it should be allowed to burn because that’s “nature’s way.” But when humans harvest trees, they say that’s raping the land — and an infinitesimally smaller bonfire on a beach threatens the planet. When beavers dam a creek and flood a mountain valley, they say it’s natural and beautiful. But when humans do the same thing, they call it despoliation. No one gives a moment’s thought to the farts of bears, bison, or wildebeest. But the farts of our livestock are a cause for grave concern.
To the environmentalist true believers, every species of plant, animal, fungus, and microbe on Earth is entitled to live in the manner to which it’s suited — except human beings. They look upon their own species as alien interlopers who threaten the pristine perfection that would exist if we all just went away. It’s the Bambi and Peaceable Kingdom myths commingled with a deep-seated self-loathing, and it’s disgusting.
(HT: Skeptics Global Warming)
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