Little Lizard That Could Cause Big Problems

Congress set up the Endangered Species Act in 1973, with the intention to protect endangered species of natural wildlife. This is a law with a noble aspiration, but like many congressional laws, it gave an opportunity to individuals and organizations for abuse. Part of the Endangered Species Act involves restricting economic development of any area which includes the habitat of an endangered species.

The significance of the law at this time is that it has the potential to stop oil and gas production in West Texas, through designation of the West Texas Sand Dune lizard as an endangered species.

As is typical of most federal laws, Congress gave the administration of the law to the Fish and Wildlife Service, who works for Pres. Obama. Our president has been anti-fossil fuel in his efforts to promote solar and wind energy. His administration recently said they would speed up action on various environmental petitions.

The Center for Biological Diversity had asked that the West Texas Sand Dune Lizard be listed as an endangered species about 10 years ago. More recently, this has been supported by a federal lawsuit by Wild Earth Guardians, and also verbally supported by the strongly influential Sierra Club.

The Executive Director of the Sierra Club is Michael Brune. He has written a book entitled, " Coming Clean -- Breaking America's Addiction to Oil and Coal", so we know his position on oil drilling.

John Horning is the Executive Director of Wild Earth Guardians. Horning has a BA in History. Notice that he has no science or environmental background, other than what he has picked up. His background is typical of those who end up as political activists.

Kierán Suckling is the Executive Director of the Center for Biological Diversity. He has a BA and MA in Philosophy. In addition, he studied natural language processing and math. His philosophical work was primarily in phenomenology, hermeneutics, deconstruction, modern philosophy and philosophy of language. Notice he has no science or environmental background. He is another educated person who ends up as a political activist in an area where he has no education.

Neal Boortz, the radio talk show host, has recently concluded with justification that the general environmental movement in the US has been infiltrated by communists intent on destruction of our economy and the establishment of communism. It is likely that the three above-indicated organizations fit this category. The problem for the economic development of the US is that such subversive organizations, in collaboration with the US President and his Administration are now using Congressional laws to foster their ends of subversion.

The fate of the Sand Dune Lizard is not significant. The key point is whether the Endangered Species Act can be used to shut down economic progress in the US. This is not a new political activist program. It has taken time for some of us more dull-witted persons to recognize the basic intent. We now see that Spotted Owl protection intended to shut down the West Coast lumbering industry. The Snail Darter attempted to shut down a nuclear power plant. And, the Sand Dune Lizard now attempts to shut down oil and gas development in West Texas.

Congress made the original law, which allows this misuse, and Congress now has the obligation to correct the law to accomplish what was originally intended and eliminate the possibility of misuse, which is now rampant.