WARNING: This is a rant, and one for which I make no apologies.
Humans comprise only 1 of 2.12 million species on the Earth today that we know of. Some scientists believe there are actually somewhere between 5 million and 10 million species on the planet. Think about that one for a minute … we are not the ‘be all and end all’ of the planet, although it seems we are trying very hard to end life on this planet for most all species including ourselves. The one thing that humans take the #1 place for, though, is arrogance. Humans evolved and at some point, decided that they are the most valuable, superior species on Planet Earth. To that end, mankind has somehow concluded that it is his “god-given right” to kill members of every other species either for food or for sport.
Do you remember a man named Greg Gianforte? He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2017-2021 and is now the governor of Montana. But what Gianforte is most famous for is beating up a member of the press, Ben Jacobs of The Guardian, simply because he didn’t like the question Mr. Jacobs asked him regarding his view on health care policy during his 2016 campaign. Gianforte tried to claim that Mr. Jacobs had grabbed his wrist, but that was proven to be a bald-faced lie by witness testimony and recordings of the event. In the 2016 election, Gianforte was elected despite (or perhaps because of?) his assault on the reporter … says something about the state of Montana and its people.
Gianforte lasted only four years in Congress but is now the governor of Montana and never has there been a more despicable example of the human species. What has he done now, you ask?
It happened last December 28th when Gianforte decided to commit murder. The 5-year-old mountain lion was wearing a GPS-tracking collar that Yellowstone biologists use to monitor the rare and elusive predators. Park staff knew the animal by its research number: M220. I have no idea what gave Gianforte the notion that what he was about to do was in any way fair or honourable, but what he did was chased the mountain lion with hounds until it ran up a tree for safety, at which time Gianforte and his friends shot and killed the lion.
Look at this face … isn’t it far more beautiful than that if its murderer, Greg Gianforte?
There was no ‘fair fight’ … Gianforte and his group had 4 bloodhounds and hi-powered guns that could cover a distance far greater than the lion could, while the lion had only his claws and teeth and he could not possibly have gotten close enough to cause so much as a scratch on any of those so-called ‘men’.
This was far from the first murder Gianforte has committed upon other species. Less than a year earlier, Gianforte killed a Yellowstone wolf in a similar area that was also wearing a tracking collar, prompting an outcry among environmentalists. On October 28, 2000, he was fined a measly $70 for violating state Fish and Wildlife Commission rules by killing an elk. In February 2021 while governor, he violated state hunting regulations when he trapped and shot an adult black wolf known as “1155”. This sorry excuse for a ‘man’ believes he has a ‘right’ to murder innocent animals for trophies!
Gianforte grins as he shows off his “trophies”
Gianforte has four children … this ‘man’ should NEVER have been allowed to reproduce! Why isn’t this ‘man’ in prison??? He committed a crime … a crime against this entire nation, against all inhabitants of this planet!
While I believe that Gianforte is among the very worst examples of the human species, there are others vying for that title. In a period of just under six months last year, hunters shot and trapped 25 of Yellowstone’s wolves — a record for one season — the majority killed in Montana just over the park border. The hunting has eliminated about one-fifth of the park’s wolves, the most serious threat yet to a population that has been observed by tourists and studied by scientists more intensively than any in the world. The Republican-controlled legislature in Montana passed laws mandating a decrease in the state’s wolf numbers and allowing hunters to catch wolves in neck snares, hunt them at night and lure them with bait, sometimes chopping off the animals’ feet and heads, among other atrocities.
A wolf’s carcass left to rot by murderous hunters
I’ve long said, only half-jokingly, that if I get the chance to come back to Earth again, I’m coming back as a wolf. I still hold that hope, for I’ve always felt that the wolf is my ‘spirit animal’ if such a thing exists, but today I hope that if I do return to Earth as a wolf, it is almost anyplace other than the United States! People here love their guns and are so damned arrogant that they believe they are superior to every other species and that it gives them the right to murder members of other species. Heck, I won’t even kill an ant or cricket I find in my house if there’s any way to rescue them and return them to nature! Apparently I am an anomaly among the human species, at least in this backward nation!
Meanwhile … no, humans, you are quite possibly the most flawed species that exists today. You fight against doing those things that might ensure the survival of yours and others’ futures here on Earth, but would rather keep driving your big cars, keeping your house the perfect temperature, and buying more and more ‘boys toys’ — guns to kill, to murder. To murder … helpless wolves, mountain lions and other beautiful animals who have never harmed you in any way.
In addition to the people’s voice, there are numerous legal challenges still pending in the courts that have held up the implementation of the act. But now, all of a sudden, the Department of Interior has announced that plans have been finalized to open up roughly two million acres of formerly protected land in southern Utah to the fossil fuel industry for mining and drilling. Mining and drilling for the very things that are decimating our planet, killing wildlife, and ensuring the extinction of the human species. Without permission from the owners of that land. Without approval by environmental groups or the courts.
This is yet another example of Trump & Co putting more money into the pockets of the already-wealthy, at the expense of the other 99% of people in this country. Fossil fuels are on the way out the back door, globally. Trump brags that the U.S. is now the biggest producer of oil. Guess what? That’s nothing to brag about. It would deserve far more kudos if we could say we were the largest producer of wind or solar energy, that we had decreased our dependence on fossil fuels. Whether Trump, Bernhardt or their cronies at Exxon-Mobil like it or not, coal and oil are rapidly becoming dinosaurs in the energy market.
If Donald Trump and his cronies have their way, the entire nation will be covered in buildings, mines, drilling rigs, and waste dumps. No more beautiful national parks, mountains, hiking trails, clean beaches, green valleys …
While we keep watching the circus playing out before our eyes, the clown with the funny hair and weird makeup who keeps tweeting mindless inanities, things are happening in our government. Things that will have an effect on our health, our freedom of press, our very lives.
Why, you ask? In late December, amid the government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Interior, currently under the direction of Acting Secretary David Bernhardt, proposed changes that would make it harder for the public and media to obtain records of agency dealings. According to The Guardian (you don’t find these things in U.S. news) …
Want to know what’s wrong with William Happer? Happer is a “theoretical physicist”, whatever the heck that is, at Princeton, and is one of the most demented climate change deniers in existence. Here are just a few of the things he has to say about climate science …
The reality is that Happer knows little about emerging technologies or real threats to America’s national security but he does know a great deal about denying climate science. And, sadly, that appears to be the only qualification you need to join the Trump team these days.
Like Zinke, Pruitt, Happer and all the rest in the current administration, he is a denier of climate science. Some of his beliefs:
Gorgeous place, isn’t it? Don’t you just love all the wildlife running free? What? Where is it? It is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Feel free to grab a couple of the pictures to remember it by, for soon … soon it is likely that it will no longer be so pristine, so beautiful, and the animals are likely to be gone.
This land has long been a source of controversy between those who would protect both the land and the wildlife, and the others who would like to drill for oil on the land. In 1987, an impact study showed that if drilling were to take place …
Shortly after taking office, Trump unveiled his fossil fuel-dependent “America First Energy Plan”. In his first months, he signed several Executive Orders designed to pave the way for opening previously protected lands and waters for resource extraction. In May, Interior Secretary Zinke signed an order that requested an updated assessment of untapped potential oil and gas reserves in Alaska, which could then be used to make a case for drilling in the Arctic Refuge.
In an August memo, it was revealed the Department of the Interior wanted to lift a longstanding moratorium on exploratory seismic studies in the refuge. Now – remember the donor tax cuts bill that passed last December? Yeah, that one … the one that gave all those lovely tax cuts to the wealthiest 1%, increased both our debt and deficit, and left the rest of us in worse shape than before. Well, turns out that the republicans in Congress folded legislation into that bill that will ultimately open the doors to drilling for both gas and oil.
This week, the first permit application to begin seismic testing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), was submitted by two Alaska Native corporations and a small oil services firm. The Department of Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service was not happy, however. The Fish and Wildlife Service complained that the permit application failed to provide studies about the effects of the seismic work and equipment on wildlife, the tundra and the aquatic conditions in the refuge. In other words, no environmental impact study was included.
The area is home to polar bears in winter and porcupine caribou and hundreds of migratory bird species in summer. No drilling has been done there since it became a refuge in 1980 and no seismic work since the mid-1980s.
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