GOP makes plans to invalidate Endangered Species Act

>>101118
GOP/Trump: Planet Rapists

The way things are going we need new endangered species policies that help them move.

The habits they need are creeping north.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/5d22zy/predicted_shift_of_diversity_of_tree_species_in/

You'd have to be a special kind of autistic to think logging, drilling and other forms of "economic growth stimulation" is more important than preserving the endangered species.

Or you're just a GOP member.

>>101164
And while people are starving and homeless, you relate to dirty animals.
Hopefully your cell-phone has sterilized you. Too many children suffering retarded parents like you, talking to their beasts but not to their own children. Too many children suiciding to get away from parents like you who babble the mindless priority of beasts while their own children go hungry and criminally neglected and abused. Governments can't take children away from all the toxic parents fast enough.

>>101187
>Hopefully your cell-phone has sterilized you
I am literally shaking right now.

Please just find a way to sterilise yourself with your phone and do it.

>No, Guys, Your Cellphone Is Not Making You Infertile
http://healthcare.utah.edu/healthfeed/postings/2014/06/061914_cellphone-cause-infertility.php

>Could checking your status sap your sperm?

>"Men who talk on their mobile phones for an hour a day 'are twice as likely to have low sperm quality'," the Daily Mail reports.

>The researchers recommend carrying your phone in your shirt pocket and using an earpiece when making a call.

>However, given that the study analysed both of these factors and found no link with sperm quality, we can't say whether this will have any effect on fertility.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2016/02February/Pages/Mobile-phone-use-linked-to-poor-sperm-quality.aspx

>>101187
Who the fuck put animals in front of children here. What a fucking random jump, your board is that way. >>/b/

They really do try hard to be cartoon supervillains.

YEY!
ENDANGERED SPECIES AREN'T ENDANGERED ANYMORE :)

>>101187
>And while people are starving and homeless, you relate to dirty animals.
Surely that has nothing to do with the people trying to reduce spending on social programs in order to line their own pockets, no sir! Its all those dirty environmentalists' fault!

>>101164
>building and heating houses for people is less important than animals!

Well gosh diddely darn, I guess I'm GOP now.

>>101313
No, you just think of them that way, and your choice of media reinforces that prrejudice.

[MEANWHILE AT THE LEGION OF "DOOM"]

>Gentlemen, I know you're all wondering why I gathered you here.
>I have an EVIL PLAN to reduce our reliance on foreign goods, and reduce our national debt!
>*Collective Gasp*
>Nyahaha! Yes! We shall grant additional selective logging contracts to lumber companies, creating thousands of jobs!
>And this newfound source of cheap, evil domestic lumber will be used to manufacture American goods and build American homes! EEEVIL!
>*Evil snickering*
>All we have to do is utilize the massive amount of Non-national park federal land in the western US that sits around contributes literally nothing to our GDP!
>[Additional, withering evil laughter]

>>101370
Can you imagine a world where some natural resources like forests are kept around for the aesthetic value instead of being monetized for contribution to the GDP?

>>101371
I don't think you understand just how much undeveloped land there is out here in the west that's owned by the Bureau of Land Management that is neither a national park nor a spot of particular aesthetic interest.

Nobody wants to cut down all the Sequoia trees in Calaveras or Yosemite, least of all myself or Republicans, but all the lumber needed to continue housing development for a rising national population has to come from somewhere, and there are plenty of places of no interest to tourists that have what we need.

>>101377
If only we could build houses out of materials that don't rot away in 50 years in humid environments.

>>101378
Wood has and probably will always be prime housing material, since you can prevent rotting by keeping it dry in a number of ways, and it's, naturally, renewable.

Believe me, I'm all for building houses out of earthbags/supercompressed dirt bricks/recycled shit/whatever, but technology hasn't reached that point yet.
Concrete/Bricks come from quarries, which dig up the land, so the EPA says "no go" on that.
Sod, adobe, and stuff like it cannot support large structures.
And finally, steel comes from those nasty, polluting steel mills, which get that iron and coal from ebil, mountain wrecking mines.

When human population goes up, either nature gets fucked, or the humans get fucked. If you don't get your materials from home, you get them abroad, it'll just come out of some brazillian rainforest instead. If nobody encroaches on undeveloped land at all, food supplies start to fall behind the population it can support unless technology can take up the strain. (And it looks like it'll be able to, soon, but that day isn't now.)

It's not what you learn in those saturday morning cartoons, but it's the truth. I bet you every penny I own all those people starving in Venezuela wish that those rainforests were growing wheat and raising cattle instead.

>>101378
I'll try to finish up here with an analogy. If you're a Democrat you (probably) believe that the National Rifle Association is bad because they champion the 2nd Amendment in spite of mass-shooting incidents and other somesuch. Well, the Republicans see the EPA in a similar way, as an organization with too much power that willingly prolongs an issue for the sake of politics, they get seen as overzealous, unrealistic tree-huggers just like the other side looks at the NRA as a bunch of overzealous, unrealistic gun-nuts.

And both sides see themselves helping a noble, just cause, no matter what the other side says in regards to them.

>>101359
If you want heating and housing, we already have everything we could possibly need in that regard. There is no shortage of those materials. You could always introduce a subsidy or social system that reduces the costs of those things, but you don't want that either.
People are living in shitty conditions because the average to good conditions are expensive as fuck and rarely keep their original value.

>>101380
Wood is naturally renewable, but we're not talking about harvesting in a renewable fashion. The companies go in, clearcut, and then leave the land. Some do replanting, but they do a shit ass job of it and seem to not understand that shitty ecosystems lead to shitty wood. This is why I like North Carolina, they chop down predetermined and regrown woods, and leave that now open area surrounded by other trees. It's not as fugly as a clearcut, and nowhere near as devastating.

>>101398
>People are living in shitty conditions because the average to good conditions are expensive as fuck

And locally producing the materials needed to achieve those conditions will mean that, since supply is higher, demand can be met and eventually living costs get cheaper. More houses = cost for houses goes down.

>but a social system could do the same thing

That would only be a stopgap measure, because the supply stays the same (same amount of houses/rate of housing growth) the costs ultimately stay the same and would naturally come out of everybody's pocket through extra taxation.

Which is a different thing we could debate about as well, I guess, but it's all going to come back to
>rich people are all greedy and evil!
>poor people are all lazy and stupid!

>>101399
>they chop down predetermined and regrown woods

Yeah, selective logging. I never argued for clearcutting and I'm aware of the environmental impact such an approach would have.

>>101187
Do you really think homeless/poor people are going to be treated much better? Tell you what, if you're so upset, give your place to someone who needs it more and you'd have done more than most people will in a lifetime. Then you can feel less insecure about posting in comfy threads while young Oliver begs for a seconds.

The rest of us will work to take care of all the other problems the best that we can.

>>101403
I should probably clarify before somebody jumps on me, I don't support clearcutting as a method of sustainable logging but I do approve of land clearance as a means of expanding farmland.

I do hope the day comes where we can get those big, hundred story, automated hydroponics buildings to take care of all of our food needs and let the forests reign, but Heaven knows they won't be here until we're old and gray.

>>101400
There is no shortage of houses *now* though. There are neighborhoods near me of 40+ houses with maybe 10 of them occupied. Apartments and other large building communities could actually cut down on the amount of wood used (mine is mostly concrete as well as being cheaper than a 250k house. Apartments and other large building communities will always be cheaper for the consumer, but people have no desire to have one built near them because it might drag their property values down. Property values which, again, they are never going to get a decent payout from.
>>101403
Invalidating ESA and gutting the EPA will only make that more prevalent. It's the equivalent of shutting down the NRA because the chances of gun legislation passing are extremely low right now.

>>101410
>There is no shortage of houses *now* though. There are neighborhoods near me of 40+ houses with maybe 10 of them occupied.

Well, that's great for your neck of the woods, but you can't possibly think that's indicative of the housing situation nationwide.

>Apartments and other large building communities will always be cheaper for the consumer, but people have no desire to have one built near them because it might drag their property values down.

It would be nice if the opposite were the case, but commieblocks are commieblocks. Making them look (and work) well is just as cost-intensive as if it were the same amount of single-family homes. The same amount of food, water, and energy needs to go in and the same amount of sewage and trash needs to come out. Plus most of the US just doesn't have the population density to make it a good investment.

>Invalidating ESA and gutting the EPA will only make (clear cutting) more prevalent.

I didn't see in the article any proof they were even planning the former, though the latter could definitely happen. Just good ol' editorial conjecture.
As to your point, believe it or not, I'm big on conservation, as hypocritical as that might sound. I'm in favor of regulating mining, logging, and drilling in such ways as to keep it responsible and not do more damage than necessary, but I also think keeping massive restrictions on these industries at a time when we definitely need them (and have the land to spare) is asstarded. Personally I think the EPA (just like the NRA) needs a reality check, though both for different reasons.

>>101359
The more housing and farms you build for people, the more they breed.

>>101640
Yep. And the wheel rolls on and on. Even if you don't build those houses and plow farmland people will continue to breed, but eventually they starve since food production can't keep up.

Out in the good ol' animal kingdom something like this happens daily, where both herbivores and carnivores outbreed their food supply, and proceed to either migrate to a new area or starve to death. (Incidentally this is also the reason the government issues tags to hunters in the quantities they do, to help keep animal populations from overflowing their habitats and proceeding to run around neighborhoods and highways.)

We humans though, we don't have any of those wonderful control systems. We can't pick up and head to a different Earth (Yet). We can't introduce some kind of population control system to keep ourselves from starving to death, because human rights. (Also people who support that kind of thing are edgelords.)

So humanity as a race is damned to keep expanding or end up with supply problems with food, shelter, water, and all those other wonderful things we need.

Until we start getting out into the stars, mind.

>>101380
>Believe me, I'm all for building houses out of earthbags/supercompressed dirt bricks/recycled shit/whatever, but technology hasn't reached that point yet.
Perhaps you should read up on the new and exciting technology known as adobe.

>>101689
Was there some big breakthrough that allows adobe to support loads that steel can?

>>101359
As far as I understand economics, too much growth is bad as it creates a bubble where the economy has to stagnate or crash. One resolves the problem quicker than the other. And that inflation, a small amount, is a must with a growing economy.

So... going all for broke on growing the economy will be good in the short run but cause a lot of pain and suffering in the long run. Keep the economic growth restricted to a manageable degree and keep the Endangered Species Act.

But I'm just a bedside shitposter, what do I know?

>>101716
Economic growth is one thing, population growth is another. Another example I could try and relate to this is Africa, where the tik-tik fly epidemic prevents mixed farming and animal husbandry in about 4 million square miles in ~30 countries, all of which are unable to adequately feed their populace, and suffer from periodic violence and anarchy as a result. (Much of that tribal violence you hear about is acquisition of food by force.) Many argue that expanding the pesticide campaign against the insects would drive several species of other insects found nowhere else in the world to extinction. At some point the humans have to take priority. I'm not very knowledgeable on economics either, but the truth is that as long as humans keep fucking, they're going to make more humans that need feeding.

Species go extinct all the time. This makes room for new species to exploit the new conditions. Saving current species could very well preemptively kill off new and better species...

>>101370
>missing the point completely

Someone needs to be legitimately psychopathic if they think they have the right to cause extinction in the name of economic growth.

>>101744
I missed the point huh?

Before I got into the whole domestic resources debate my point was that every initiative from every party can be demonized, leading to more divisive "All my opponents are LITERALLY EVIL BABY MUNCHERS" bullshit.

You know it's not true. I know it's not true. Every side believes in their own cause, Republicans don't sit around in a dark gloomy room and scheme about how to take your money just as much as the Democrats don't.

The problem comes when people start to take this too far and believe their own party's shit doesn't stink and their opponents' shit stinks doubly so.

Are you shitposting or does the prospect of civil war appeal to you for some reason?

>>101750
>Republicans don't sit around in a dark gloomy room and scheme about how to take your money just as much as the Democrats don't.
What the hell do you think they do in Jackson Hole, WY every year?, or better yet what do you think they're doing in Davos, Switzerland right now? Playing chess?

>>101377

Wait, there's a lumber shortage now?

>>101380

The problem of starvation has never been the amount of food available but its distribution. It doesn't help a homeless person in Caracas if the entire Amazon is a cornfield if that person has 0 income, or if there are no food banks or social programs set up in the city.

But if Republicans were actually concerned about helping starving homeless people they'd know this.

>>101758
>... if Republicans were actually concerned about helping starving homeless people...

>50% of the country are evil and don't believe in any kind of food aid!

wow fuck you too

>>101750
You're being awfully defensive for someone who believes they're right. You seem to think I'm personally attacking you. That's a projection of a guilty person.

I don't hate you, I hate what you're saying. Humanity is growing out of control, not unlike a cancerous tumor. And we attempt to justify it, rather than attoning for our sins. If you deny that, you delude yourself.

>>101776
(different anon)

>And we attempt to justify it, rather than attoning for our sins.

what does "atoning for our sins" do to help with rising population? what do you propose exactly

>>101740
>new species arise as quickly as we are killing them

Say what you want about protecting endangered species, but protecting bees/other pollinating insects should definitely be considered important. At least until small robots that do the equivalent jobs are created and are proved to be successful.

>>101723
But that's not the USA, our farms are subsidized and if you think Lumber is expensive, you haven't tried construction yet.

We don't have those problems and we have massive and efficient, although heartless, methods of producing shit tons of food. We export food, we can't do that if we have a shortage of food.

Now in my neck of the woods, there is plenty of space for new residences and I see about 5 or more new homes or comercial developments a year. Your area may be different. We have plenty of space to make homes and apartment complexes that we don't need to invade on protected land, Just come here to bumfuck nowhere New York. It's legal and alright to clear the land for new buisness!

Africa has a whole slew of other problems besides food, but that is a major one .

>>101779
After WWII ended, we should have realized that nationalism is what caused all the trouble. We should have concluded that nuclear weapons are too dangerous to exist. We should have surrendered all undeveloped US land back to native people, and ended imperialism outright.

But because world leaders are greedy, competitive and psychopathic, they built an unsustainable system. The baby boomers who fucked things up will all die, and the consequences of their actions will fall on us.

We're at a point now, though, where it's too late to salvage our system. We'll run out of fossil fuels, antibiotics will become ineffective, and jobs will be mechanized. All this will happen while our population breaches 10 billion.

And unfortunately for me and people like me, we care too fucking much to ignore what's going on.

>>101874
Not him but, capitalism probably isn't our future.
It was always a race for any species, including the bacteria and us humans, and antibiotics are meager solution anyway.
And fossil fuels suck it should be nuclear and electric all the way, Phased in of course.

We just need to worry about fucking up the ecosystem because after that.

>>101877
I agree with you with nuclear power, but we need to treat any reactor as if it were a bomb. That means buried underground with redundant cooling and shielding.

>>101359
You can do that with solar, retard.

>>101880
Why? Modern reactors can't explode.

>>101377
The USA is entirely capable of growing it's own pine in plantations

>>101187

What is with this feverish desire on the part of GOP to squeeze the every last drop of money out of every space, object, and living thing that isn't a part of corporate america? We really need this in order to find a feasible way to enable basic dignified living standards for american citizens?

The libertarian solution is to trust individual people to be responsible but of course that's not going to happen. Of course enough out of our population of 300M+ are not going to have any compassion, understanding, or long-term view, and are going to totally flout all responsibility toward living things that have no mechanism of recourse.
Some poachers are going to leave some elephants to repopulate next generation. But I'd bet my life some don't give a flying fuck how many remain, whether we're talking about Congolese or American.

The answer that libertarians have to that is just make mistakes and learn from them as a culture. Unfortunately some of those mistakes include loss of irreplaceable biodiversity. If that's the only thing we lose in the process, I don't know if I should count humanity as lucky.

>>101164
but logging does preserve endangered species.

if land is used to farm trees, the forest will stay. otherwise the landowners would use the land for more lucrative things

>>101377
this guy gets it

>>101958

I don't disagree but we should have some institutional framework that ensures national land is used in collective national interest.

It may well be that we need more open space in order for responsible logging to occur, but that should be possible along side sensible regulation.

>>101943
Proof? I can't imagine a way to prevent any dangerous failure under any circumstance.

>>101883
Where are you going to get all that flat, treeless space for solar panels anon? You going to take it from potential farmland or take it from the wilderness?

>>101874
>we should have realized that nationalism is what caused all the trouble.
Nationalism didn't cause all the trouble, the Treaty of Versailles did. (You could also trace all the trouble in the middle east to the Sykes-Picot Agreement)

Literally all Serbia's fault tbh.

>We should have concluded that nuclear weapons are too dangerous to exist.
Hope you would have enjoyed the big West vs East showdown that would have happened without that nuclear deterrent. Millions more deaths, the Fulda Gap being reminiscent of the cratered fields of verdun, and all those cities being firebombed.

>But because world leaders are greedy, competitive and psychopathic, they built an unsustainable system.

Go live in North Korea. (Not even memeing.) Juche is all about sustainability and self-reliance. Their trucks even run on wood. You'll love it.

>>101874
>And unfortunately for me and people like me, we care too fucking much to ignore what's going on.

good job you successfully virtue signalled,
now tell us what you would do to fix it

>>101996
You really don't see how the "my country, right or wrong" strain of popular thought contributed to the World Wars?
Emasculating the Germans played a critical roll but there was an underlying bedrock of nationalism that served as the foundation for political cultism to flourish.

>>102012
Plenty of people throughout all eras of history and all governmental systems have been nationalist, populist, or patriotic.

The only reason that national socialism got as popular as they did was the unfair treaty terms at the end of WW1. You could reasonably see how someone could shout "They all want to see us in poverty!" and people would believe it. The Germans were economically emasculated and blamed for everything. The Italians got gipped out of the Austrian territory they were promised when they joined the war. Toss in a big fucking recession and it's not wonder that people got as pissed as they did.

>>102010
Wealth resdistribution. Breakup of large corporations. Push for birth control, especially in developing countries.

So basically no corporation should be a multinational entity, unless it's nonprofit. It enables corruption in the highest levels, simply by existing. And no person should own more wealth than what can give them a comfortable, somewhat luxurious life, and a decent savings account. So, say, nothing over $10 million total net worth?

And if we don't prevent an African population boom, every first world country is fucked. They'll manage to get in somehow.

>>102031
Hot damn, would you like fries with that?

>>101996
>Where are you going to get all that flat, treeless space for solar panels anon?

cities

>>102065
Don't forget next to highways.

>>102031
So we should essentially steal people's money when you deem that have too much of it. Sounds great that'll totally work out just fine.

I do support the complete and total genocide of all Africans though, so consider me sold on that one.

>>102065
The problem with cities is that buildings aren't all of a homogeneous height, meaning that many panels won't be exposed to sunlight for significant amounts of time per day depending on how large the disparity in building height is.

It would help, sure, but it's not "Mission Accomplished."

>>102031
Aren't taxes and social spending what you are talking about? Regulations to break up large corps? And if you want to be a christian missionary for abstinence only, go right ahead. I don't want no part of it.

But an arbitrary cap on wealth is retarded, it doesn't even account for inflation over time, where that amount of money will be the norm in say... 80 years? Where Inflation doubles the cost of shit every 20 and all of a sudden that luxurious life quickly turns to just above a working to live comfortably scenario.

>>102079
>Taking money from someone who hoards it is evil!

>Genocide is fine, though

I recommend a lobotomy.

>>101377
Actually we have all the tree farms and second growth forests we need for economic growth. Old growth is not needed, just more profitable in the short run. Converting it to second-growth will actually hurt in the long run. Best to leave it alone for now.

This is just depressing.

The problem is is that bluepilled libs value aesthetics too much over real economic progress. Trees and wild animals do not help anybody by just existing; they do not put food on the table, they do not make products, they do nothing except exist. Why should I care about "nature" or wild animals that will never ever help me, when their destruction or manipulation for more economical schemes would possibly benefit me and many others?

>>102185
>Why should I care about "nature" or wild animals that will never ever help me, when their destruction or manipulation for more economical schemes would possibly benefit me and many others?
Because the Ecosystem is too fragile to quickly terraform the entire planet into a factory.

>>102186
We have the tech now where we don't have to worry about the ecosystem, we can create a man made one that serves us.

>>102187
Technology don't last forever, even in acid rain.

Also, you dare to defy the will of the Bald Eagle? It's the reason why the Endanger Species list was created in the first place. Also, the fucking Bees helps with pollination, yet they're at the edge of extinction thanks to pesticides created by lazy ass corporations.

You saying fuck nature and the fucking peasants and go to fucking space colonies (which, I might add, is fragile against asteroids and other space debris).

>>102189
/this. In Aus we went herp derp cut down teh trees make teh wheats! Trees have deep roots - tear them alll up and your water table rises. You lose your topsoil to erosion, wind blows hard with the forest. Not only that - in west Australia the water table is often saline. No trees meant salt in the top soil - so we lost 10s of percent in arable land because we were dumb to try and balance farm/forest ratios.

Fucking letting some gibbering moron banker who cant even be trusted with home loans to manage an ecosystem - even with farm output as a priority. Their track record is hang the consequences cashpocalypse now.

>>102191
What are things Americans learned in the Dustbowl, Alex?

>>102192
Crop rotation; but that's farmer stuff.

>>102082
The problem is that the largest area of every city is made up of suburban sprawl

High rise areas with buildings of wildly varying heights comprise such a tiny percentage of the total area of the world's cities that the thing you're talking about is negligible

Put a small battery in every house and an array of cells on every roof, we're not going to remove the need for Central power generation but it will drastically reduce the need for it

>>102192
Australia is a textbook case of how not to manage your water supply

>>101187
You're right, I'm a dipshit and can only care about one issue at a time. Caught me.

>>101377
If we're deporting all the Mexicans you can kiss that growing population bit goodbye, friendo.

>>102224
So if we deport all the brown people the white people stop fucking? That's both not going to happen and would only delay the issue.

>>102185
Well, at the core of my ethics is that if something can suffer, it deserves a degree of consideration corresponding to how much it can suffer.

The fact that I tend to value my suffering over someone else's is merely an instinct, not an objective; it's something that must ultimately be overcome so that we can work toward a real greater good.

Maybe sometimes we need to value one life more than another as an investment toward a collectively better future. A human life will always have more potential to accomplish good than just about any other animal. At the same time, even if we have the means to guarantee that our civilization can thrive after catastrophic ecological change, something like faster economic growth still cannot be used to justify limitless cost borne by non-human life. Life that isn't of any practical worth to any human still shouldn't be worth zero.

>>102185
>Wildlife doesn't help me in anyway

Bats eat insects which destroy crops and cause disease. They save the agriculture industry an estimated $53 billion/year in pesticide use and lost crops. Some plants, like agave which is used to make tequila, are also only pollinated by bats.

>>101118
>yahoo
my god *facepalm*

>>102185
>Trees don't help anyone by existing
>What is the carbon cycle
>What is wind protection
>What is soil erosion

>>102185
>Trees
>they do not put food on the table, they do not make products

I honestly hope you're just pretending to be this retarded.

>>101874
Sad sack of shit

>>102185

Have you graduated middle school yet

>>102185
>>102464
wew lad