Economy vs. Ecology

Here's a perfect example of the foolishness of our leaders.
(From today's Detroit Free Press (I couldn't embed the link for some reason))

Asian carp DNA found in Great Lakes
By TINA LAM

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
The Army Corps of Engineers announced new DNA findings Tuesday that show Asian carp, a voracious fish that many experts fear could wreck the food chain in the Great Lakes, may already be in Lake Michigan.

DNA tests show the presence of carp at the breakwater of Calumet Harbor in Illinois, beyond the nearest lock. The breakwater leads to the open waters of Lake Michigan.

The announcement came just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Michigan’s plea to shut down the locks leading to the lake.

Federal officials suggested the DNA could have come from ballast water carried by barges from carp-infested rivers downstream.

“We do not believe that’s plausible,” said Lindsay Chadderton, one of four members of the University of Notre Dame who developed the DNA test and have done all the sampling and analysis for the Army Corps of Engineers.

The DNA testing indicates carp were there within 48 hours of when the sample was collected Dec. 8, he said “It is an early warning that an undetermined number of Asian carp have likely entered Lake Michigan,” he said.

Our, oh-so-wise, leaders wish to put off short-term unpleasantness, i.e. lost business and up front cost, for a wait-and-see attitude that stands a good chance to create a long-term disaster. If the Asian carp make it into the lakes with a breeding population, then perhaps 50-100 years from now the the western Great Lakes fishery will collapse. Not diminish, not slightly hurt, but COLLAPSE, DISAPPEAR, perhaps for good, to go, where Bruce Cockburn sings, "To where wild things go to disappear forever."

This is a case of putting the economy (the rules of the household) before the ecology (the study of the household). As my prof. O. Gelderloos stated, shouldn't we know the characteristics of the household before we make the rules (eco=oikos (Gk.)=household)?

No matter who is in office, they really don't care about much beyond what the corporations tell them to. I fear for the lakes, you should too.

Worth Quoting

There are but three social arrangements which can replace Capitalism: Slavery, Socialism, and Property. --Hilaire Belloc The Servile State

Good reads of 2009

I haven't made a list like this in a while, and I believe I discussed most of these on the blog as I finished them, but I thought I'd make a handy short-hand list for you and me. These are only in the order I read them and do not indicate any preference. The Open Door * Frederica Mathewes-Green The Children of Hurin * J.R.R. Tolkien The Omnivore's Dilemma * Michael Pollan Agrarianism and the Good Society: Land, Culture, Conflict, and Hope * Eric T. Freyfogle Wonderful Fool * Shusaku Endo Up the Rouge: Paddling Detroit's Hidden River * Joel Thurtell and Patricia Beck Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation * Rodney Clapp (I started the following in December, but I haven't finished them--so far they are excellent: Love and Hate in Jamestown * David A. Price and The Picture of Dorian Gray * Oscar Wilde) Try one of these--let me know.

Independent Women?

During breakfast today I was reading an excerpt from a play in The New York Times Magazine (I know, I was a day behind and read Saturday's edition yesterday) entitled Rust . The play, written by a professor at Grand Valley State University, here in Michigan, is a nonfiction drama about the closing of a GM plant in Wyoming, MI. The play itself sounds interesting and I enjoyed the excerpt, but what caught my eye was something a character said. The character is "Academic" and plays a historian and guide to the playwright, also a character. He is explaining the rise of the automobile factories and the effect of the car on American culture. He says, "Women became independent, they go from producers of food and clothing to consumers of food and clothing." This was meant as an earnest, praiseworthy point. I would counter with "How far we've fallen." To say that a woman (or a man) is independent because she has moved from producer to cons

I Am Not Hamlet

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