Sunday, June 13, 2010
When even NS can see the problem.........
When New Superstitionist magazine, the house organ of the Gaia Church, criticizes an environmental effort, you know for damn sure it's ridiculous.
As usual, the Endangered Species Crime is based on bizarrely false pseudo-science. It's not about species at all; it's about local subpopulations.
How does nature work? More precisely, how does evolution work? Populations that can't adapt to local conditions die off, allowing more adaptable critters to move in. This is Darwin 101. Thus the whole point of the Endangered Species Crime is to rape Darwin, to fuck Nature over, to turn evolution backwards, to artificially maintain the non-adaptive populations so that life gets more out of balance every year.
There's the standard PETA line. All Holy Sacred Sacramental Spiritual Birds who have been Desecrated by any contact with Evil Satanic Humans must be put down. They must not be allowed to continue in their Profaned Condition.
Finally the clincher:
The article didn't get around to answering "who pays", but we know anyway. We pay.
Assuming typical inflation since '89, each Sacramentally Re-Virginated Holy Bird costs about $25k now.
Twenty-five thousand dollars for one pelican. Now $25k may seem paltry to the elites who spend that much for one glass of wine, but I can live comfortably for two years on $25k.
We're exchanging two years of human life for a possible extension of one goddamn bird's life.
It's all about esthetics, all about celebrity. One photograph of a Beautiful Person like Lindsay Lohan costs 50 years of human life. Saving one Beautiful Bird costs 2 years of human life. Meanwhile, we continue to slaughter billions of Non-Beautiful Chickens. ¶ 7:19 AM
Brown pelicans dripping with oil are quickly becoming the poster children of the ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill. As oil slicks continue to lap at the pelicans' breeding grounds in coastal Louisiana, armies of wildlife rehabilitators are frantically trying to catch and scrub the contaminated birds clean. What does it all mean for the long-term survival of the species – just months after they were taken off the US endangered species list?
The species as a whole isn't about to go extinct as a result of the oil spill: as 400,000 out of a total global population of 650,000 live in Peru. Roughly 60 per cent of the subspecies Pelecanus occidentalis carolinensis breed along the Gulf coast, where many nest on the barrier islands off Louisiana that have already been exposed to oil.
As usual, the Endangered Species Crime is based on bizarrely false pseudo-science. It's not about species at all; it's about local subpopulations.
How does nature work? More precisely, how does evolution work? Populations that can't adapt to local conditions die off, allowing more adaptable critters to move in. This is Darwin 101. Thus the whole point of the Endangered Species Crime is to rape Darwin, to fuck Nature over, to turn evolution backwards, to artificially maintain the non-adaptive populations so that life gets more out of balance every year.
Do the cleaned birds stand a chance of survival or should they be killed humanely?
The International Bird Research Rescue Center, one of two organisations heading up the treatment of oiled birds in the Gulf, claims that 50 to 80 per cent of the birds treated survive [to the point of release.]
The survival rate following release is more difficult to determine and is subject to controversy. The biologist Silvia Gaus recently called for oiled birds to be killed humanely, claiming 99 per cent of released animals die within days or a few weeks due to stress or kidney and liver damage from ingesting oil.
There's the standard PETA line. All Holy Sacred Sacramental Spiritual Birds who have been Desecrated by any contact with Evil Satanic Humans must be put down. They must not be allowed to continue in their Profaned Condition.
Finally the clincher:
What are the costs of the rehabilitation programme, and who foots the bill?
Figures from the clean-up of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill put the cost at $15,000 per marine bird for a total of 627 birds released. This covers building rehabilitation centres, staff and helicopters and private boats. The cost of caring for wildlife after recent oil spills has amounted to roughly 1 per cent of the total clean-up costs.
The article didn't get around to answering "who pays", but we know anyway. We pay.
Assuming typical inflation since '89, each Sacramentally Re-Virginated Holy Bird costs about $25k now.
Twenty-five thousand dollars for one pelican. Now $25k may seem paltry to the elites who spend that much for one glass of wine, but I can live comfortably for two years on $25k.
We're exchanging two years of human life for a possible extension of one goddamn bird's life.
It's all about esthetics, all about celebrity. One photograph of a Beautiful Person like Lindsay Lohan costs 50 years of human life. Saving one Beautiful Bird costs 2 years of human life. Meanwhile, we continue to slaughter billions of Non-Beautiful Chickens. ¶ 7:19 AM
