On: EPA to open habitats of endangered species to logging and mining

They say the habitat is the problem. The home of the creature is in the way of the coin. So they will tear the home down, and the creature will have nowhere to go, and then they will say, “See, it was already dying.”

I watched a man today dig a hole in the earth where a bird had nested. He was proud of his shovel. He said the bird’s nest was blocking progress. I asked him what progress. He pointed to a pile of rocks he intended to sell. I asked him what he would do with the money. He said buy a larger shovel. I asked him what then. He stopped answering.

The dog does not ask for a deed to the field. The dog does not ask for a permit to breathe. The dog simply lies in the sun and is content. But the dog’s sun is being sold. The dog’s field is being mined. And the dog, who never signed a contract, is told to find another field.

They have kept ninety-nine of every hundred species alive with laws. Now they will remove the laws and call it efficiency. This is not efficiency. This is a man burning his own house to warm his hands for an hour.

I have no house. I have no shovel. I have no need for the mountain’s bones. But I have eyes, and I see what they are doing. They are killing the witnesses to their own existence. When the last bird falls silent, who will remember that men once stood upright and called themselves wise?