When the EPA meets moma bear with no gun

Yep, got your meaning! I have wondered the same thing. "Naive" and "impractical" are good descriptions of the attitudes of many so-called environmentalists. Bleeding hearts and all, the EPA doesn't connect with reality. Like you, I used to think of myself as being an environmentalist, but what I am has nothing to do with Sierra Clubs or EPA or whatever else they call themselves. I have found myself weeping at the destruction of a forest or a natural meadow, and I feel so blessed to hear a meadow lark or a red wing blackbird, but I know how to cut up a deer and I know how to build a fire from real tree wood. It's a different concept and I don't know what you call it.

Clive Clussler had written a book. It was one of his Dirk series. I can't remember the name of it at the moment. But at the end, Dirk released a bunch of environmentalists in the jungle w/o any survival gear. Quite a fitting end for them. Your discussion reminded me of that story. It is funny that these EPA people never realize that nature is a very harsh mistress and doesn't play favorites.

Stupidity should, and generally does, hurt. Situational awareness and knowing how to survive and keep going are important skills now that will become vital in the world our kids are inheriting because, frankly, what we have now in the US cannot hold together in the longer term. Whether we like the term global climate change or not, the fact is the world's weather is showing more and more frequent signs of being messed up. The weather patterns we've grown up with have slipped, with muc of the Midwest suffering from record heat and drought while areas like the usually-overheated Central Valley of California is wetter and cooler than the Midwest is historically and it's likely to stay that way. Sadly, the EPA is a political body, and it has been for a long time, if not since its creation. The moves that needed to be made thirty years ago were not made, and we and our kids will be playing catch-up for the rest of this century, at least. You might have a look at a book written by Mark Hertsgaard called _Hot: Living through the next fifty years on Earth_. Hertsgaard is a journalist who has been writing on the environment and the effects of its changes on people for more than 20 years. It's not airy-fairy stuff, nor is it chart-heavy; Hertsgaard has a daughter who will be living through this along with the rest of us, and his drive to understand the plain, practical truth makes Hot a serious book but one not without hope.