As a continuation from the previous post, this was “more or less” what I meant to say given your perspectives. However, there are many very good ethical non-environmental scientists and other very intelligent people who want to leave the US out of “intellectual prosecution”. Just as our forefathers left Europe hundreds of years ago.
Hmmm. You might even use the word "moral". I am pretty sure I am not alone when I regard renewable resources as a natural crop to be harvested. While few balk at removing soybeans or wheat from the field before the crop starts sprouting or fungus sets in, a very vocal contingent out there cannot seem to understand that the same needs to be done with trees which have a prime harvest time, (species dependant) before they, too begin to rot.
The same goes for animals we commonly view as game animals, which, as their domesticated equivalents, have a 'window of opportunity' in which they can be harvested as a useable resource. Failure to manage their numbers only ensures their demise through starvation and disease.
In either instance, the failure to manage and conserve these resources has led to unimaginable waste, and that is the greatest sin of all.
Strange that the same folks who would have those who do not live in urban or gated communities, but on the interface between civilization and wilderness, suffer the vagaries of predation in order to attempt to restore a balance of predator and prey which has only been tenuous at best, at the expense of members of our own species, or at the cost of tremendous resources wasted.
Efforts by those same people to preserve dyanamic systems at some capricous static values have only increased the waste of resources, and then, ultimately, degenerated into an economic weapon for political purposes and financial gain.
Thus, the 'conservation movement' degenerated into or was hijacked by (for the most part--there are exceptions) a dirt/animal worshipping cult led by a corrupt cadre of high priests for financial/political gain and a sprinkling of 'true believers', much to the ill of all--human, animal, and plant alike.
It is ironic that the worship of 'nature' be a device for the accumulation of strictly artificial gain.
Certainly, no moral scientist would embrace the destruction of the planet, after all, we live here, too.
We also recognise, that, properly done, much can be harvested without permanent destruction--the resource is conserved, managed, harvested when appropriate, and renewed.
Unfortunately, as the cultists become ascendant in power, they often control the most important resource of all--the means of 'educating' our children, from infancy to college and beyond.
Young minds taught the false catechism of the environmentalists will seldom question the interpretations of the high priests of academia, and remedial 'education' is accomplished via the popular media for those who have insufficient background in science or personal experience (decried as 'anecdotal evidence'), or who are too innumerate to decipher the contortions of valid (and invalid) data to allegedly support a foregone 'conclusion'.
The attempt to seize control goes beyond mere recruiting via the educational industry, but to the point of weeding out those with opposing viewpoints early on as students to deny them accreditation, denying them funding for research if they are already the candidates for or holders of advanced degrees, or merely shouting them down instead of engaging in honest and open debate in the halls of academia and beyond.
Does this make me want to leave? No.
Do I live in fear that I or others like me will be rounded up with 'the intellectuals' and shot or herded off to a re-education gulag?
No. After all, we still enjoy the means to stop the juggernaut as long as we can expose the public to ideas which do not necessarily conform to the politically endowed 'consensus'.
We can debate global warming and its cause, we can decry the highly questionable practice of using embryonic stem cells (if for no other reason than the successes of using adult cells vs. th failures of the embryonic methods), we still have the freedom to speak, to do research, should we chose (and to find our own funding).
Otherwise, there would be no debate. Those who decry industry research as biased, also call attention to the fact that their own sources of funding might have reason for seeing certain conclusions gain prominence.
Instead, there is a counterculture of 'working' (industry employed) and research scientists, who quietly teach our children and grandchildren--and anyone else who is inclined to learn--the fallacies of bad (junk) science and how to spot them.