If the asteroid hadn't smashed into us...

[Speck Tater]

... and if the dinosaurs had never become extinct, would today's environmentalists be trying to save endagered dinosaurs species?

I understand the need to minimize the damage done to the environment by civilization, but do we sometimes try to manage things that are inherently unmanagable? Species have been going extinct since the dawn of life on this planet. We can't possibly save them all.

So how does a liberal choose when there is a choice between saving an endagered cricket by sacrificing 100 construction jobs vs saving 100 endangered jobs by scarificing a cricket? What is the balance point? Can this party be attractive to construction workers if it represents a willingness to put them out of work for the sake of a cricket?

[mainegreen]

1. You can do both

One need not kill the cricket to build!

Build green!

(must control urge to proselytize)

[RetroLounge]

2. Not sure, but I would be enjoying a juicy

brontosaurus burger with Fred and Barney...

[Maple]

3. Assuming

that's what happened.....

[WillParkinson]

4. 100 jobs...

So, because people want to build new factories to pollute the air or gouge out land to build a new strip mall or, even worse, want to make more of those annoying condominiums/sub-divisions we should sacrifice animals whom we've probably already endangered ourselves?

Sorry, people need to learn that there are repercussions for their actions. There are more than enough places that are already for sale that companies could buy and renovate instead of basically raping the land and destroying the creatures that live there to build new.

Someone said, "Build green". If you can worth with nature and the environment then more power to you!

[displacedvermoter]

5. This is stuff right out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth

You know, just as well as I do, that when developers want to destroy wetlands or cut down huge tracts of trees, they do it. Decisions about crickets versus jobs only come to light rarely, and in the current economic climate, they are rarer and rarer all the time. More often than not, the bulldozers get there before the "liberals" do, and the reduced time available for land use studies -- the result of change to zoning policies all over the country -- means that thee is far less time to discover the rare toads or crickets that you have endangering construction jobs.

I'll tell you what is destroying good jobs for people all ove the place is the anti-union bias of the GOP and its business allies. And talk about a species that is going out of business, it is the union construction worker who is being displaced again and again -- at least here in the Hudson Valley -- by non-union workers brought in by out-of-area developers, the same people who are the biggest financial supporters of the GOP.

"For the sake of a cricket" my ass! Do the union folks you claim to be close to on a number of threads Ive seen not see that the GOP has championed efforts to roll back safe workplace rules, arsenic level protections in drinking water, and have tried like hell to change the very notion of overtime, among other things? If they do see these things, I find it hard to imagine that they cannot see that these are much more legitimate threats to them and their lives than that cricket thing you see as such a major problme to the party.

[monkeyboy]

6. I have better questions

Why is it that every time a developer sees a patch of ground without any concrete on it, he gets on his cell phone and next thing ya know, a concrete truck appears and solves the problem? Can your hypothetical construction workers do something else for a living? Can they switch to brownfielding, instead of covering every single square foot of the American continent with concrete and asphalt? Can we not, for instance, leave some of California to the farmers so we'll have something to eat? Reminds me of the loggers in Oregon who complain about taking away their jobs, never stopping to realize that they're taking away their own jobs by cutting down every last tree on the planet. Pretty soon, no more trees, no more jobs. Oh, NOW you're thinking of switching careers!

[ThoughtCriminal]

7. No Asteroid, No homosapiens

Intellegent dinosaurs decendents maybe and they would be debating about endangered mammals.

The cricket vs. 100 jobs is pure straw man.

[ewagner]

8. Here's a question I ask my conservative friends

Question: Do you know which species is the lynchpin of the entire food chain?

Usual answer: No.

My response: Neither does anybody else. So does it make any sense to play russian roullette with the environment?

[denverbill]

9. That's a really stupid question.

It's never a question of to build or not to build. If housing is needed, it will be built.

The only question is where. The houses might not be built on protected land preferred by the millionaire developer, but the houses will be built, and the jobs will be created/saved.

We could create 100 jobs by storing plutonium at our local grade school too. Am I 'anti-jobs' if I oppose that as well?

[THUNDER HANDS]

10. you could save both

Hire the crickets to do the construction!

:)

[supernova]

11. Lizard decendants

What makes you think the enviromentalists would be us Homo Sapiens? It was because of the dying off that our small mammal ancestors got a toe-hold on the planet in the first place.

If there were no dying off (possibly do to the asteriod scenario), lizard-like creatures with very developed brains would be wondering around, drinking Pepsi, listening to lizard hip-hop, and debating about who's better in the Bronto/T Rex wrestling matches.

[absyntheNsugar]

12. Exactly...

Chances are the dinasaurs would have evolved into bi-pedal intelligent creatures, building a huge society but spending a fortune in heating bills.

[THUNDER HANDS]

13. lol

I'm not sure if that was serious...but weren't the dinosaurs around for MILLIONS of years?

Don't you think if they could have evolved intelligence they would have?

Humans have had, what? 100,000 or so years?

[supernova]

16. Not necessarily

Humans are the cumulative result of billions of years of evolution experimentation, not just the 10-8 million years of human-specific evolution. Whether that's good or bad is a different thread.

We caught a huge lucky break with the asteriod. Just think of all that history being open to the dinasaurs rather than our little hamster-like ancestors.

[supernova]

15. Would they be using fossil fuel?

for heat I wonder? And wouldn't that be a form of cannibalism?

Welcome to DU absyntheNsugar! :hi:

[arwalden]

14. ... or the spotted owl?

It's difficult to tell if you're just playing 'devils-advocate' and expressing in a rhetorical way the questions and opinions of others... or if this is something that you truly believe.

Back when I was a Rush-Loving-Repuke, I used to love listening to Rush make fun of and ridicule the "tree-huggers" over the plight of the spotted-owl.

He was asking many of the same questions that you ask in your message. Both Rush and you mention that "species have been going extinct" all along. Of course this is true, but he (and you) fail to mention that the RATE of extinction is what's most alarming.

"We can't possibly save them all." --- So why bother? Screw it!

"Inherently unmanagable"?? -- Huh? I'd say that trying to manage a hurricane is inherently unmanagable. Trying to prevent a volcano from erupting is inherently unmanagable. But to characterize man's conscious and deliberate encroachment (growth, development, pick one) on existing habitats as "unmanagable" is a bit dishonest and misleading.

If we can choose TO do something, then we can also choose NOT TO do something. Where folks like Rush willing to take a stand? Obviously protecting endangered species of insects doesn't meet that threshold... but what will?

And by that time, will it be too late for the lucky species that meets *their* criteria for deserving protection? Will we have already destroyed their habitat, and their food supply, and their breeding grounds? After all... those small things weren't "worthy" and didn't meet the criteria of deserving protection.