Environmentalist Birdbrains

What’s the matter with you? Don’t you care about the birds? Don’t you have any feelings for the polar bears and the Delta smelt?

How can you call yourself a person of the left without having the right feelings for all of God’s creatures?

In a world where your moral probity is measured by whether or not you feel the right feelings, you had best care about the birds and the polar bears and the Delta smelt. And you had best ignore the practical consequences of your deep feelings.

It sounds good on paper. It allows you to proclaim that you have deep feelings for what is right.

In truth, it’s a moral scam, a way to seduce you into allowing environmental policy to be run by a bunch of mindless zealots, aka birdbrains.

Witness the following, reported in a Wall Street Journal editorial. In North Dakota, U. S. Attorney Timothy Purdon is taking seven oil and natural gas companies to court for killing 28 migrating birds. The dead birds were found near oil waste lagoons.

The Journal explains: “Continental Resources is accused of violating the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act because ‘on or about May 6, 2011 in the District of North Dakota’ the company ‘did take [kill] one Say's Phoebe,’ of the tyrant flycatcher bird family. Brigham Oil & Gas is accused of killing two Mallard ducks. The Class B misdemeanors carry fines of up to $15,000 for each dead bird and up to six months in prison.”

If you are tempted to conclude that we have the most bird-friendly administration in human history, you are getting ahead of yourself.

When it comes to bird slaughter, the oil and gas companies are bush league. The champions at this sport are wind turbines. Next to the hydrocarbon industry the wind industry has produced a veritable avian holocaust.

Does anyone in this greenest of administrations care? Are you kidding?

The Journal explains: “…this prosecution [of the oil and gas companies] is all the more remarkable because the wind industry each year kills not 28 birds, or even a few hundred, but some 440,000, according to estimates by the American Bird Conservancy based on Fish and Wildlife Service data. Guess how many legal actions the Obama Administration has brought against wind turbine operators under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act? As far as we can tell, it's zero.

“At the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area Northern California, some 5,000 wind turbines each year kill scores of golden and bald eagles, which are highly protected under federal law.” You will not be surprised to learn that the Obama administration has not brought any legal actions against the windmill operators.

Birdbrains, indeed.