Well, Billy, I hate to bring this up, but you said:
"This land grab is about coal, natural gas, etc,etc...."
Then said:
"Using that same power to glean political favor with the anti-hunting, anti-drilling, anti-mining or ANY interest group including for hunting only!!"
You can't have it both ways. If you're pro-mining and pro-drilling, then you can't really complain about loss of hunting land. I guarantee you that the CEOs of the oil and mining companies couldn't care less about whether or not you lost your hunting land. In fact, they do more damage than the anti-hunters. Land closed to hunting still exists and can eventually be re-opened through political pressure. With mining, you end up with a colossal hole where mountains used to be.
The CEOs of oil and mining interests use wedge issues to generate support among people that really have nothing in common with their objectives. It's relatively easy to label people as "...Mao honoring,tree hugging, granola crunching, wolves are huggable, and veggies are meat too...PETA, Vegan groups, and other supporters of Chairman MaO-bama and other Progressive,Socialist, Liberals..." It's a lot harder to get back hunting land because you backed the corporations that turned hunting land into an open-pit mine or oil field. And, sorry, but Teddy Roosevelt was right to create national parks. Had he not done so, there wouldn't be anything left.
Things are not so black and white as "all liberals are bad" or such blanket statements. It was a push for environmental laws that protects the wilderness, not some non-existant conservation ethic of corporations. And who led the way for those laws and started the environmental movement? Yep, it was "liberals".
I do not support mining and drilling at-will. These things must be regulated for the good of all, not the profits of corporations. For one thing, we'd use less copper (and, hence, require less copper mines which are always gargantuan open-pit operations these days) if we just returned to repairable appliances and stopped throwing away things like electric mixers after a year of use. All this cheap crap comes with a much bigger price tag than the one on the box. The true price is loss of American jobs, the enrichment of a true communist country (China, you know, where the real Chairman Mao lived), loss of habitat to increased need for landfills to dispose of the crap, and more mines and oil to make the crap to replace the crap that broke after a year. Who pays that price? Nature pays that price, along with the American workers who no longer make the appliances.
Anyone who's ever physically stood at an open pit mine or vast oil field needs to imagine their favorite hunting spot as one of those things before they start supporting drilling and mining interests. By the way, the CEOs of those corporations can afford to fly to Africa to hunt when they drill the last wetland or strip mine the last forest here. If you haven't ever seen an open pit mine or an oilfield, take a trip to one and see what you're supporting.
A nation is not great because of how fast or how much it can unearth it's natural resources. It is great by how wisely it uses those resources and by not wasting them for flippant reasons. "Drill, baby, drill" is not the answer. Conserve, baby, conserve is the answer. The reason corporations push for more drilling and mining is because they want more profits. ALright, I get it. But the planet belongs to all of us; we're not talking about people who want to grow shiitake mushrooms here. We're talking about people who want to tear open the Earth and basically destroy Nature. That act requires a consensus of all people (or at least it should), not some board of directors. We don't really need more copper, for example. We need to be smarter about using copper. Like making repairable appliances, as I said, instead of crap that gets thrown away. We're throwing away probably hundreds or thousands of tons of copper a year due to this disposable electric motor and appliance society.
Topic: Antiquitys Act to close land (Read 3622 times)
