Last Thursday, at a congressional hearing, Assistant U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Gary Frazer said that the Interior Department’s Office of Science Integrity would conduct an independent evaluation of the work of FWS biologists accused by a federal judge of being dishonest with the court and acting in ‘”bad faith.” As the Los Angeles Times reports, Frazer said the FWS stands behind the work of its scientists but the Department will seek an independent assessment from outside experts nonetheless.
Frazer’s comments were delivered at a House Science Committee Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing on “The Endangered Species Act: Reviewing the Nexus of Science and Policy” at which I was also a witness. In my testimony, I focused on the broader issue of how science is and should be used in under the ESA, and made three basic points.
First, it is important to ferret out genuine instances of scientific misconduct or science politicization. At the same time, it is essential to recognize that science merely informs, and does not dictate, policy. Species conservation is not – and cannot be – a wholly scientific exercise. Whether a given species is at risk of extinction may be a scientific question, but what to do about it is not. The likelihood that habitat loss or the introduction of an invasive species will compromise a species chance of survival in the wild is a question that can be answered by science. On the other hand, what conservation measures should be adopted to address such threats, and at what cost, are policy questions. Science can – indeed, must – inform such inquiries, but science alone does not tell us what to do. Insofar as debates over conservation policy are dressed up as scientific disputes — or instances of science abuse — we hamper our ability to assess competing policy options and pursue optimal conservation strategies.
Second, the structure of the ESA both undermines our ability to base conservation decisions on the best possible scientific information and creates substantial incentives to manipulate science so as to influence policy outcomes. The former occurs because the ESA makes the presence of endangered or threatened species a liability to private landowners. As a consequence, private landowners are often reluctant to allow government or other researchers to conduct surveys or engage in other species-related research on their land. This means the ESA makes it more difficult to know which species are most in need of help and where they are.
The ESA creates incentives for interest groups and others to try and manipulate science because certain science-based determinations, such as whether a species is “endangered,” are triggers for non-discretionary regulatory measures. This means that if an interest group wants to influence regulatory outcomes, it is in their interest to try and influence the initial scientific determination. This explains why there is so much controversy and conflict over species listing decisions. The Act itself turns what should be primarily a scientific inquiry — whether the best available science indicates that a species meets a given definition of what it means to be endangered or threatened — into a high stakes proxy battle over regulatory policy. This is not good for science, and further complicates the quest for optimal conservation measures.
For those interested, my full testimony is here. Portions of my testimony are based on my chapter in Rebuilding the Ark. An archived webcast and the written statements of the other witnesses should be available here, as are pictures from the hearing.
Robert says:
One of the biggest bones of contention is whether to count a certain kind of living thing as a species. There’s no widely agreed on way to do it — even in theory!
October 18, 2011, 11:37 amJim Rhoads says:
In the past, species have come and gone without much intervention from humans. Is evolution a factor in determining whether a species is “endangered” in such a way as to trigger remedial action under the ESA?
October 18, 2011, 11:55 amSteve says:
The logic seems to be that in order to isolate science from political pressures, we must ensure that the outcomes of scientific research carry no political consequences whatsoever. Thus we get worse public policy outcomes, but at least the science is better even though we aren’t doing anything with it.
Maybe the door is open for a grand bargain on global warming – the right will stop claiming that it isn’t happening so long as the left agrees not to pursue any remedies for it.
October 18, 2011, 12:08 pmgooners says:
I think I’ve seen that argument on this very blog.
and here it is: http://volokh.com/2010/11/08/how-progressives-misunderstand-much-conservative-skepticism-of-climate-policy/
October 18, 2011, 12:11 pmragebot says:
As has been pointed out way too many times to count 99.99% of species (by almost any definition of species you want to use) are now extinct.
My Mother use to say she wished Noah had had a fly swatter handy on the Ark; and I would bet we could reach agreement that humans would be better off if not only flies but some other insects were extinct.
As Jonathan correctly points out there are some real flaws in the ESA, and he is much more capable than I am in detailing them.
But the biggest problem I see with the ESA is equal protection for all species. From my point of view my Mom was right about Noah and the flies; I wish he had a fly swatter. There are also some species that will be extinct in my lifetime even if ESA is able to take action.
I have little knowledge of the Preble’s Meadow jumping mouse; but with a name like that most folks would guess on a multiple choice test that it is an endangered species. On the other hand there are plenty of rats and mice that seem to have no problem increasing their population despite the best efforts of humans to eradicate them; especially in places like NY City.
Maybe we simply need to do a better job of teaching evolution in our schools; especially the part about survival of the fittest.
October 18, 2011, 1:32 pmFantasiaWHT says:
“but what to do about it is not” – I disagree, what to do must be a scientific question, at least to let the policy makers know what is likely to work!
Also, I find it interesting that we, supposedly at the pinnacle of evolution due to survival of the fittest, fight so hard to preserve the by-definition unfit species.
October 18, 2011, 1:38 pmgooners says:
Darwin explains pretty clearly that evolution is prompted much more by competition between individual within a species that between different species. This makes sense because within a species individuals are competing for the very same resources and so the slightest advantage in an individual can lead to big evolutionary rewards. He thought cometition between species was a secondary consideration. So it isn’t survival of the fittest species, it is survival of the fittest individual.
As for bugs – you can’t imagine some possible unintended of getting rid of all the flies?
October 18, 2011, 1:48 pmSoronel Haetir says:
Umm, “what will work” presupposes an answer of what the goal is. Is the goal saving species for saving species sake? Is the goal saving species that play a vital ecological niche that won’t be taken over by other species? Is the goal simply to have a massive regulatory sword of Damocles to hang over landowners to make them go along with pretty much anything?
No amount of science will make the choice for us, but can only tell us how expensive any particular option might be.
October 18, 2011, 1:48 pmragebot says:
I am not sure how you define a fit or unfit species; but there are lots of well respected folks who put the cockroach high up on the fittest ladder. They have been around for quite some time with few evolutionary changes. Not to mention they are immune to radiation and could survive an atomic bomb better than anything except a few types of butterflies.
October 18, 2011, 1:52 pmJonathan H. Adler says:
No. The point is not to make science have “no political consequences,” but for science to inform rather than dictate policy choices. One consequence of this is that policy choices will have greater political consequences because policymakers will no longer be able to hide behind science.
I think you’re the first person I’ve seen characterize a carbon tax as doing nothing.
Your conflating an assessment of the likely consequences of given conservation measures — relative effectiveness, relative cost, etc. — with the choice of which one is preferable. Choosing which conservation measures to adopt inherently involves normative considerations which are beyond the province of science.
JHA
October 18, 2011, 1:52 pmSteve says:
The global warming debate is proof positive that science will be plenty politicized even when science merely “informs” policy choices. Even if every single endangered species designation was put up for a vote in Congress, stakeholders would hardly stop trying to influence the underlying scientific process. You’d simply be giving them an additional point at which to affect the process.
October 18, 2011, 1:57 pmragebot says:
Maybe not, but I can imagine the problems of taking everything literally.
October 18, 2011, 2:14 pmgooners says:
You said humans would be better off if some species were extinct. You meant that figuratively?
October 18, 2011, 2:24 pmChrisIowa says:
WE are NOT the 99.99%!
There have to be flies. Turkey vultures need something to soften their meat for them. Flies are part of the advance team.
October 18, 2011, 2:38 pmSteve says:
I read an interesting article last year on a topic I have always wondered about: do mosquitos really fill an essential niche in the ecosystem? Not that I have a great plan to exterminate them, but still.
October 18, 2011, 2:44 pmragebot says:
The point I was trying to make is that is silly to think all species deserve equal protection; especially given the fact that over 99.99% of all species are extinct.
If I was to select a single species with a declining population that would cause real problems to humans if it went extinct it would be bees; way ahead of any problems caused by flies going extinct (and it is unlikely files will go extinct).
But this is getting way OT from the topic of the thread that ESA has some problems; and the point I was trying to make that one of the problems he did not note was that by giving all species equal protection we ignore the fact that all species are not equal.
In fact insects are the dominant life form on the planet if we take mass as the criteria to measure dominant life; insects out weigh all other life forms in absolute terms.
I also find it interesting that the fed govt thinks it is a good idea to try and protect the Preble’s Meadow jumping mouse while local govts in places like NY City spend considerable resources trying to control rats and mice.
Some species are viewed as pests and humans do spend resources to at least control them. There may be unintended consequences when certain species go extinct, but by the same token I can not come up with an extinct species that had unintended consequences harmful to humans. As for flies going extinct I view that as unlikely.
October 18, 2011, 3:02 pmgecko says:
Species naturally arise and become extinct all the time. So called environmentalists are trying to create an artificial scenario where no species is allowed to become extinct ever because it would make them feel bad. Wouldn’t this mess up the cycle of life and ecosystem they’re always harping on?
October 18, 2011, 3:11 pmJonathan H. Adler says:
I think the global warming debate is actually evidence of the contrary. The truly pathological aspect of that debate is the pretense that a greater degree of scientific certainty about climate projections would suddenly resolve the policy debates. Neither side actually believes this, but that is the way both sides frame the argument. In reality, global warming presents a massive risk management problem. There is strong — albeit not incontrovertible — evidence that human activity is contributing to a warming of the atmosphere and good reasons to believe this could produce all sorts of negative consequences. The policy question, then, is how to identify measures that represent cost-effective ways of reducing the risks posed by climate change, and which measures make sense given the real, but uncertain, risks that climate change poses. The right doesn’t like to acknowledge this because it suggests we should do something other than “do nothing.” The left doesn’t like this because it suggests something less than “do everything.” But rather than try to support their policy preferences within a risk framework, both talk about the science, as if knowing the precise degree of expected warming in 2050 or 2100 would somehow tell us what emission reduction target to adopt.
I’ve also argued that one can justify action on climate change relying simply on a libertarian property-rights framework. Again, however, science plays a supporting role, and not a determinative one. In this paper, for instance, I try to show that even if one adopts standard “skeptic” projections, there is a strong case for action from a libertarian perspective.
Bottom-line: Science is important, but policy questions must ultimately be resolved on normative policy grounds.
JHA
October 18, 2011, 3:43 pmSteve says:
It’s kind of sad that this has to be explained, but the purpose of the Endangered Species Act is not to ensure that no species ever becomes extinct, nor do I know of any environmentalists who seek that goal. Rather, the purpose of the ESA is to address extinctions that occur as a result of economic development and other human activity – extinctions that would not otherwise naturally occur. It’s kind of a blinkered view of evolution to assert that if a given species of fish can’t survive in the runoff from the local chemical plant, it must be a sign that God just didn’t want that species to make the cut.
October 18, 2011, 3:45 pmSteve says:
I don’t think you really mean “a greater degree of scientific certainty.” I think you mean “a greater degree of political consensus regarding the existence of scientific certainty.” Even if the scientific consensus is 99.9% confident about the effects of global warming, the policy debates will remain unsolved for so long as one of the major political parties continues to make it an article of faith that the scientific debate is still wide open.
I actually find it pretty amazing that the most important Republican legislator on environmental issues believes “the threat of catastrophic global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated upon the American people,” but in your mind that’s not as pathological as the people who believe that if we all came to agreement on the state of the science, we’d form a consensus regarding the best solution.
October 18, 2011, 3:53 pmAJK says:
At what point in human history did our actions stop being part of nature?
October 18, 2011, 3:54 pmJarbidge says:
If we’re talking about the extinction of a species that is completely viable absent human malfeasance (Passenger Pigeon, Bison, …) then (IMHO) the argument for stopping the extinction is quite high.
It’s less clear for a species that is only marginally viable absent human intervention, perhaps because it has a very limited geographic distribution (naturally, not because of human actions). If we can save those cheaply, great (for example, fencing off Kendall Warm Springs to protect the resident species of dace (a fish) is a pretty low cost thing. But I don’t think you can rule out every development project that might cause the extinction of a relict population; if the Kendall Warm Springs Dace happened to be in the way or the Grand Coulee dam, I wouldn’t stop the dam (assuming arguendo that the dam is a good idea in the first place).
October 18, 2011, 3:56 pmSteve says:
Pretty much always, I would think, since the common definition of “nature” excludes human activity. You can argue that humans building a chemical plant is just as natural as beavers building a dam, I guess, but I think you won’t find many people who think the chemical plant is natural.
October 18, 2011, 4:00 pmSteve says:
Well, I probably wouldn’t stop the dam either. But I’m not adamantly opposed to Prof. Adler’s view that the ESA strikes the balance in the wrong place or that it could do a better job of accomplishing its goals. What I’m arguing against is the view that the entire premise of the ESA is misguided.
October 18, 2011, 4:03 pmGiant Frog says:
With genetic engineering we’ll soon be able to build new and better species. Maybe.
October 18, 2011, 4:51 pmarch1 says:
“The ESA creates incentives for interest groups and others to try and manipulate science because certain science-based determinations, such as whether a species is “endangered,” are triggers for non-discretionary regulatory measures. This means that if an interest group wants to influence regulatory outcomes, it is in their interest to try and influence the initial scientific determination.”
Jonathan, in your testimony you appear to favor decoupling the listing decision from mandatory conservation measures in order to reduce pressure to “…manipulate listing decisions.”
I think you’re putting the regulatory response cart before the science horse. Doesn’t the very fact that you are recommending a certain approach to the regulatory response based on its predicted effect on the science suggest to you that something is fundamentally broken, and that you are not really decoupling what needs to be decoupled?
Isn’t the real problem the very fact that with the current process, the politics can greatly influence the science, and wouldn’t the best solution therefore be to attack that problem head on?
Perhaps that proposal strikes you as naive. But it strikes me as even more naive to think that changes on the regulatory response side can a) somehow magically remove everyone’s incentives to exercise their political influence (currently very potent, and your proposal wouldn’t change that one bit) on the science, while still b) achieving what should be its sole mission of effectively and appropriately addressing the issues identified by that science.
October 18, 2011, 5:06 pmFred the Fourth says:
Steve: But according the the documentary film “Lilo and Stitch” the mosquito IS an endangered species, and that’s why the aliens haven’t rubbed us out (yet).
October 18, 2011, 5:20 pmPaddy says:
Arch1, your comments are spot on. My experience during the spotted owl and marbled murrelet made me rather cynical.
The phrase in the ESA that requires “best available science” is responsible for many dysfunctional outcomes under because the best available science is frequently rubbish. Listing petitions are too frequently filed by a biologist hoping that petition is a ticket for the research grant gravy train. Another abuse is taking obscure animals or plant about which little is known and making them proxies for political results, such as blocking or ending land uses.
The ESA is one of many tools developed that promotes playing God with or trying to geo-engineer some aspect of nature. We must remember that extinction is evolution in action. Nature would d be better served if we stopped interfering.
October 18, 2011, 5:42 pmStephen Lathrop says:
Wait a minute. You start with a call for cost-effective measures, and conclude by saying the amount of warming is irrelevant? How do you propose to figure out the costs of doing nothing? If those are high enough, then “do everything” could be the most cost-effective choice available.
It is hard to escape a conclusion that Adler wants to altogether decouple science from environmental debate, because science is not in fact as subject to manipulation as he claims. If it were, and if the development interests Adler favors could manipulate it, would Adler keep coming back to this topic?
October 18, 2011, 6:08 pmSChaser says:
The ESA, at least as represented by many environmentalists and scientists, is itself premised on bad science – the incorrect theory that the extinction of a species by man is always harmful to the ecosystem (presuming science can even define “harmful”). Many are the times the argument has been made that every creature has a niche and wiping out one species will cause the whole ecosystem to come tumbling down. This argument is wrong on its face (does anyone argue that the ecosystem depends on the continued existence of Variola Major – smallpox?)
October 19, 2011, 12:37 amarch1 says:
Stephen, Jonathan didn’t say the amount of warming is irrelevant. He just said that predicting future warming extremely precisely is neither necessary nor sufficient for meaningful policy proposals, which can begin based on inexact probabilistic models [which in truth is all we'll ever have -Ed.], plus normative considerations.
(That said, I don’t see how you get from policy proposals to something vaguely resembling a policy consensus without tough discussions of both the normative frameworks and the predictive models. My sense is that differences in the two sides’ normative frameworks tend to also bias their respective predictive models so as to – big surprise – increase, not decrease, the gap between the resulting initial policy proposals.)
October 19, 2011, 1:02 amStephen Lathrop says:
I don’t want to be misunderstood in what could be taken as an extreme position, so, right up front, I fully endorse the elimination, extirpation, and extinction of smallpox.
On the other hand, speaking only ecologically, the argument that the ecosystem might derive great benefit from unchecked epidemic smallpox seems overwhelmingly obvious. That humans are altering natural environments in ways that disrupt ecosystems is obvious. Fewer humans would mean less of that.
Plus which—thinking only of humans—we probably do not yet know what the full consequences for human health of a world without smallpox might be. Human immune biology is complicated. Many people survived smallpox, with immune systems altered in ways that the long-term survival of humans suggests were at least compatible, if not beneficial, for long-term human survival. Now those alterations are to be subtracted from human biology. It will probably take a few generations, or possibly many, to learn whether that could produce unexpected negative consequences.
More generally, fewer humans would be an excellent idea ecologically, however it happened. Surely there are more benign ways to do it than smallpox, or any other catastrophe.
More generally still, the notion that some particular organism or creature damages man, therefore its destruction is ecologically benign, has been one of the most consequential policy errors of the past two centuries. Knowing that something is damaging is only half of what you need to know to determine whether getting rid of it would be a good idea. Knowing the cost of its existence is easy. Getting rid of it may be easy. Determining the cost of its absence before getting rid of it tends to be dangerously difficult.
October 19, 2011, 6:09 amMarian Kechlibar says:
Existence and virulence of smallpox has enabled colonization of American continents.
The New World would look very different if Amerindians were as resistant to Old World diseases as, say, Indonesians or Japanese.
October 19, 2011, 6:39 amragebot says:
What ever position one takes on smallpox eradication we all can agree it is a hardy species which accounts for it being around for a while.
The same goes for flies as well as several insects we all might want eradicated if there was no chance of unintended consequences.
But as I pointed out earlier the problem with ESA is it provides equal protection for all species; something that strikes me as just plain silly.
I would bet dollars to doughnuts there are lots of species which could be eradicated with nary a blip on the map. Case in point was provided by Jonathan, the Preble’s Meadow jumping mouse. There are multiple instances where the ESA has been used to protect species with very limited geographical distribution and a total population of less than five figures.
Back in the day I use to provide input for Environmental Impact Statements related to developments. While it is easy for me to see possible impacts resulting from the extinction of some species this is not true for all species the ESA is applied to.
October 19, 2011, 10:36 amStephen Lathrop says:
Ragebot, let me offer a hypothetical to illustrate one difficulty with your analysis. Of course it will suffer the usual defect of such examples—hypotheticality—but otherwise I think it makes a useful point.
Suppose Preble’s Meadow jumping mice, unbeknownst to anybody, do something in their small corner of the world that is quite useful to the bees that happen to live there. Something about controlling grasshoppers that otherwise consume the bees’ favorite flowers, say, which bloom late and provide the bulk of the overwintering food for the bee colonies. Just in that area, mind you.
And suppose, also unbeknownst to anybody, that just a few bee colonies in that area are unusual, in the least noteworthy sort of way. There has been a largely benign mutation that alters some metabolic pathway, without too much harming the bees’ ability to get along. The mutation is mildly disadvantageous, adversely affecting the bees’ ability to extend their range at the expense of more aggressive neighbors, but otherwise it does nothing noteworthy. Within that little pocket, just by coincidence, the mutation gets passed down from generation to generation, without obvious consequence. Give it enough time in that isolated setting, and maybe you would get a quirky new species of bees. Rare, like Preble’s Meadow jumping mice. But that has not happened yet.
Then, shortly after you wipe out the jumping mice, and a hard winter kills off those quirky mutated bee colonies as a result of the ensuing flower shortage, something else happens. Worldwide, conditions for honey bees change for the worse, and they die en masse. And of course you see where this is going. It was that now-extinct mutation in that one little place that was going to be the key to worldwide honey bee survival under the new conditions. So instead of expanding out of the Preble’s mouse pocket into newly vacated habitat, and recolonizing the world, honey bees go extinct. Oh, shit.
Who knew? Well, nobody.
Is that a probable story? Of course not, it is wildly improbable. In that respect it is exactly like all the other stories about natural selection and evolution. Every single characteristic of particular species, and every interaction among species, is the result of long chains of wildly improbable occurrences. And the entire repository of the legacy of all those accumulated improbable occurrences is the world ecosystem. Simplifying it is asking for trouble.
Ordinary probability suggests we should expect trouble to increase geometrically, not linearly, as ecosystem simplification proceeds. Eight organisms can interact in more than twice as many ways than four, and sexual reproduction makes the results of interactions heritable and diverse. Running the diversity clock backwards will predictably deliver nasty surprises—like the hypothetical one above—at a geometrically increasing rate.
There is every reason to prefer an improbable present world—in which human prosperity has been proved possible—to some unknown future world for which the question can’t be answered.
October 19, 2011, 12:37 pmRobert says:
Probably only conscious human activity, so, for instance, leaving most of the internal workings of the human body as part of “nature”.
October 19, 2011, 2:40 pmMDT says:
AJK,
At what point in human history did our actions stop being part of nature?
Threadwinner.
October 19, 2011, 5:53 pmragebot says:
At least your hypothetical was short.
October 19, 2011, 8:19 pmStephen Lathrop says:
Touché, Ragebot.
But it’s long for a reason. Well, two reasons, actually. One, it can take a tangled narrative to describe what generally happens in ecological interactions, because entanglement is what they are all about. Two, I’m not a good enough writer to do better—leastwise without taking more time than I can give to commenting at VC.
October 20, 2011, 4:36 amThursday morning links - Maggie's Farm says:
[...] angry angry angry at the Wall Street bankers and money people Sol Stern: Who’s a Zionist? Volokh: Assessing Endangered Species Science Will the Senate Quietly Kill the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom? The [...]
October 20, 2011, 7:22 amSChaser says:
This is a classic example of the precautionary principle taken to absurd extremes.
The argument is that we cannot know for sure that an extinction will not have a major, negative impact.
But in reality, we can know that in many cases, including that mouse. The assertion of the extreme fragility of ecosystems is very convenient to environmental fundamentalists, but it is usually bad science. Ecosystems are usually very entangled, but they are also usually quite resilient. This is especially true in the case of many endangered species, because their numbers and density is too low to have any significant impact.
Mankind has destroyed a lot of species. In most cases, there was no significant impact.
Beyond that, there is the implied value judgement that nature is somehow sacred, and wiping out a species is, well, a sin.
So we have the absurd situation where farming has “terraformed” the earth, which few object to, but a species with a tiny population cannot be allowed to die out due to indirect human influence – especially if it is cuddly or cute.
If the ESA existed in 1800, we should be about as prosperous today as Bangladesh.
There is a fundamental dichotomy: those who would preserve some of the environment in its natural state for the use of man, and those who ultimately want to freeze everything in its current state or “return it to its natural state” simply because somehow the earth deserves it. The latter, being a weak political argument except in blue-state coastal cities, is often dressed up with the idea that the “environment” will be “irreparably damaged” with some strong implied threat to our well being. If it isn’t the suspected criticality of some rare species, its an argument for biodiversity because we may need that species for drug research or something (people arguing the latter appear to be unfamiliar with zoos and other animal husbandry).
October 20, 2011, 11:09 pmStephen Lathrop says:
What we are talking about, of course, is the foreseeable destruction of species by people seeking private (though not always purely private) advantage. The argument is that if something that SChaser wants to do to make money would be impeded unless some species is destroyed, SChaser ought to be able to do that. In short, the argument is that SChaser enjoys license to treat the species as if it were his private property.
But on what basis does SChaser lay claim to the species? How can SChaser’s claim be superior to mine, or anyone’s. If SChaser can own the species, why don’t I own it? And if SChaser destroys it for his benefit, why hasn’t he taken what is mine in doing so?
Three “usuallys” in two sentences. The point of ecological precaution is that what usually happens can sometimes matter less than what rarely happens. Because even the least likely occurrences approach certainty when you roll the dice often enough. And natural selection rolls the dice trillions of times a day, not only when organisms breed, but also when they die. Antibiotics usually kill bacteria, but nevertheless, bacteria evolve to evade antibiotics.
October 21, 2011, 8:37 amSChaser says:
We are? I thought we were discussing the misuse of science with regard to the ESA, and the general value of the ESA.
HOWEVER, if members of the species is on my land, then yes, the value of my land should not be diminished in any way by related regulations, unless I am compensated for that. As shown in the posting, this is not how the ESA is enforced – hence the practice of destroying habitats on one’s land to prevent endangered species from diminishing its value.
This approach to the ESA makes Kelo look like a wise decision. At least with imminent domain, in theory one is compensated for one’s contribution to the public good. But with the ESA, one can be forced to make a huge sacrifice with absolutely zero compensation.
The ESA privatizes the cost of a public good, which is even worse than the practice of stiffing taxpayers in general for private profit in ventures like Solyndra. It shows utter disregard for private property – it is worse than collectivism, which at least pretends or attempts to provide good to its victims.
October 21, 2011, 11:31 pmSChaser says:
Yes, and it is done in an extreme fashion without cost/benefit analysis. Supporting those extremes is done with religious, not scientific arguments.
We actually know a lot more about the impact of species than you might think, and (as you demonstrate with your last sentence), nature is a lot more resilient than environmental fundies give it credit for.
It was environmentalists that cause the near total banning of DDT, resulting in millions of deaths in Africa. As is sometimes the case with environmental extremism, that ban was based on fraud hiding under the mantle of science (more common is mere hysterical exaggeration). A rational response to the reported “harm” caused by DDT would have been to reduce its usage (it was being sprayed in huge amounts on US fields, for example). This reduction was done in Africa in some places, where the deaths of children to malaria simply made it politically impossible for even the most zealous of enviros to maintain the ban.
Today, we have a bedbug epidemic because we are not allowed to use that pesticide (DDT) which made bedbugs part of a night-time custom (“don’t let the bed-bugs bite”) as opposed to an unhealthful, unpleasant but too common experience in this country.
October 21, 2011, 11:36 pmIs it worth legislating science to have science-based regulation? « The Notwithstanding Blog says:
[...] policy consequence, the science will make a better political target than the legislation. See this piece on the Endangered Species Act for an example of what I [...]
October 23, 2011, 10:54 pm