Harsh Blankness of the Noon Day, 32nd of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Aldebaran): Since its passage in 1973, the Endangered Species Act has faced criticism from a range of business interests, including farmers, ranchers, loggers, and rural landowners. Opponents have accused environmentalists of weaponizing the law to block infrastructure projects without consideration of potential economic benefits. Yesterday, the Stable Genius proposed to significantly restrict the Act with new rules that would clear the way for more oil drilling, logging, and mining in critical habitats.

One of the most controversial proposals would allow the government to consider economic factors, such as lost revenue from a ban on oil drilling near critical habitat, before deciding whether to list a species as endangered. The Act currently requires the government to consider only the best available science when making these decisions. Another proposal would also prohibit designation of critical habitat for species threatened by climate change and gut the government's ability to designate habitat in unoccupied areas needed for recovery.

The proposed changes would also gut nearly all the protections for species newly designated as “threatened” under the Act. The changes would allow developers and industry to override the recommendations of experts to block habitat protections, and weaken the consultation process designed to prevent harm to endangered animals and their habitats from federal activities.

Especially considering with recent proposals to restrict the wetlands protections in the Clean Water Act, the proposed changes aren’t about protecting endangered animals and plants. They are about letting the biggest companies in the country drill for more oil, log old-growth trees, and mine for coal even if it causes iconic species to go extinct and cheats Americans of their natural heritage. It's about opening the country up to be plundered and butchered by business and industry, to designate North America as "a continent to despoil and poison," as William S. Burroughs once put it. 

As the tough-as-nails biker chick Rikki Patel reminds us in the zombie survival game, Days Gone, “Rivers do not drink their own water. Trees do not eat their own fruit. And clouds do not swallow their own rain. The great ones always act for the benefit of others.”