No, this you will not do!

 

“We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources,” Roosevelt acknowledged in 1908, before adding, rather presciently: “But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.”  Theodore Roosevelt

 

I’ve known for years that it was just a matter of time before the government set about pillaging citizen assets in the name of the God of profits for the few.  I’m deeply saddened to realise that this is truly an eventuality.  Even sadder is the knowing that this eventuality will become reality.  When will the hundreds of thousands of people who love Nature speak out and proclaim “No, this you will not do!”

 

An analysis by the Center for American Progress (CAP) https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2016/04/11/135044/the-rise-to-power-of-the-congressional-anti-parks-caucus/

has found that between January 2013 and March 2016, rightwing members of Congress filed at least 44 bills or amendments designed to undermine or water down protections for national parks.

 

A core group of 20 members of Congress, many of them Tea Party members, are part of what CAP calls an “anti-parks caucus” gripped by an implacable hostility to public lands.

The wider Republican party is receptive to this position – its official 2016 platform states: “Congress should reconsider whether parts of the federal government’s enormous landholdings and control of water in the west could be better used for ranching, mining or forestry through private ownership.”

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/23/national-parks-100th-birthday-political-threats