The destructiveness of Gold-Fetishism on full display in Alaska...

Today, WaPo reports on a massive political fight going on between US EPA, Alaskan natives, fishermen, environmentalists, and a Canadian gold mining company:

"Just north of Iliamna Lake in southwestern Alaska is an empty expanse of marsh and shrub that conceals one of the world’s great buried fortunes: A mile-thick layer of virgin ore said to contain at least 6.7 million pounds — or $120 billion worth — of gold.

As fate would have it, a second treasure sits precisely atop the first: the spawning ground for the planet’s biggest runs of sockeye salmon, the lifeline of a fishery that generates $500 million a year.

As early as this spring, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to invoke a rarely used legal authority to bar a Canadian company, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., from beginning work on its proposed Pebble Mine, citing risks to salmon and to Alaska’s pristine Bristol Bay, 150 miles downstream. The EPA’s position is supported by a broad coalition of conservationists, fishermen and tribal groups — and, most opinion polls show, by a majority of Alaskans."

So what we have here is a fight between fake wealth and real wealth. The gold types want to put real wealth- this area of pristine wilderness which supports a massive salmon fishery (ie high protein, low fat FOOD) at risk in order to produce fake wealth- 6.7 million pounds of a soft metal of limited utility (ie GOLD).  Its a sad state of human affairs that we would risk real wealth to extract something of superficial value, that derives most of its "worth" from ancient superstitions, and artificial scarcity from being melted into bars and locked away.

This comes down to FOOD vs. GOLD. Which would you rather have?

Thankfully it appears that US EPA will make the decision to block this project and save the real wealth....at least for now.

Timothy Cama — Senate GOP steeling for battle against EPA

Because mandate.

The Hill
Senate GOP steeling for battle against EPA
Timothy Cama

"The Merchant of Avarice"

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Start Putting Human Sub-Species On The Endangered Species List? 

That May Be Our Most Viable Option At This Point!

Some candidates. The Middle Class? India's Girl-Child class? Women everywhere? Not to mention non-billionaire voters. Et tu college students?

Seriously. Getting EPA protection, stateside or in Europe, may be the quickest way to get protection legislated soon enough to matter. That means soon enough to prevent ourselves from lopping off too many parts that "WE" can't survive without. Even German voters care more about saving bumblebees than about saving the citizens throughout southern Europe, although they admit both acts are for the same, aggregate purpose. Huh?? Regardless. Show me another way to get the entire 28-nation block to make remedial adjustments that quickly!

You couldn't make this level of stupidity up.

In a cut-throat race to hoard "fiat" - and defer it's use to supposedly more important times - we may literally end up cutting one too many of the key cultural arteries that supply infrastructure supporting each of the competitive lobbies wielding an economic knife. If Shakespeare were still around, he'd have to re-write some themes, including coming up with "The Merchant of Avarice" - about an idiot intent on repeatedly cutting off a pound of his OWN flesh, to reduce expenses and thereby pay off old debts to himself. Doh!

Yet is that the ONLY way to stem the growing stupidity? 

Wouldn't establishing some simple tolerance limits on EVERY process be far simpler than clumsy, self-assisted suicide? 

We've already made mico/macro self-assisted suicide illegal, but like other declared wars, our avowed efforts expand the exact entity we purport to squash, thereby calling into question the very axioms we're using to shape our efforts.

Perhaps a bit more balanced thinking would do wonders?

To try that out, do we have to put quality of distributed decision-making on the endangered species list too?

Jeff Spross — New Study: The Economic Benefits of EPA Regulations Massively Outweigh The Costs

From the 2012 Presidential campaignonwards, Republicans have railed against the regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as “job-killing,” as a threat to freedom, and as a drag on economic growth. The claim has never comported with evidence, but like a zombie it just refuses to die.
The latest effort to kill it comes via a new study from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which found that the benefits EPA regulations bring to the economy far outweigh the costs.
The way this works is pretty straight-forward. Environmental regulations do impose compliance costs on businesses, and can raise prices, which hurt economic growth. But they also create jobs by requiring pollution clean-up and prevention efforts. And perhaps even more importantly, they save the economy billions by avoiding pollution’s deleterious health effects. Particles from smoke stacks, for example, are implicated in respiratory diseases, heart attacks, infections and a host of other ailments, all of which require billions in health care costs per year to treat. Preventing those particles from going into the air means healthier and more productive citizens, who can go spend that money on something other than making themselves well again. Another example is carbon emissions, which will impose costs on the economy in the form of future disruption to food supplies, destruction from extreme weather, and other upheavals if they’re not curbed. Researchers generally put those costs at around $20 to $25 per ton of carbon, but estimates vary widely.....

Climate Progress
New Study: The Economic Benefits of EPA Regulations Massively Outweigh The Costs
Jeff Spross

As usual the opposition is sewing disinformation to generate FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt).

Rick Perry-Getting to know the candidates

Presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry released his economic plan Friday, promising that an energy-centric program to expand offshore drilling and domestic oil and gas exploration would create 1.2 million jobs.

Perry, who spoke at a suburban Pittsburgh steel mill before a hard hat-wearing crowd, is building on the Republican Party's "drill, baby, drill" mantra, He'd move to open federal lands to drilling, including Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and would curtail the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory powers....

Struggling to seize a message of his own, Perry turned to the energy sector — familiar ground to any energy state lawmaker — as the basis for his jobs program....

Saying the premise for his plan is "Make what Americans buy, buy what Americans make and sell it to the world," Perry predicted that, "We are standing atop the next American economic boom ... energy."

"The quickest way to give our economy a shot in the arm is to deploy American ingenuity to tap American energy. But we can only do that if environmental bureaucrats are told to stand down," he said.

"America has proven but untapped supplies of natural gas, oil and coal. America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, with 25 percent of the world's supply. Our country contains up to 134 billion barrels of oil and nearly 1.2 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas...."

Perry said he'd open up federal and private lands for exploration in states such as Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Colorado and Utah. The Western states could produce 1.3 million barrels of oil per day by 2020, he said, adding that they also contain 87 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Perry's harshest criticism was for the EPA. He said he'd stop "the EPA's draconian measures related to the regulation of greenhouse gases" and return air and water oversight to the states, "rather than imposing one-size-fits-all federal rules...."

Perry plans to unveil the second part of his economic program Oct. 25 in a speech focused on overhauling taxes.

Read the full article at McClatchy, Perry, struggling in campaign, unveils economic program