I know what you do to sustain your sanity during these hallucinatory news cycles when it seems you have run out of patience and the words to try to figure out just what (TF!!!) is going on. So, as you usually do, late this Saturday night when you climb the ladder, and then warily tip toe balance your way to the crest of your roof, and just before you commence your weekly round of maniacal howling that helps you keep it all together for seven more days, pause and consider this: in the center of every other sort of fugly action Trump and his Republican team committed last week, they also found time to eviscerate the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, first passed in 1918 to protect any migratory birds from exploitation or destruction by individuals, business interests or corporations. That is right. They went after birds.
When something like this happens, always ask cui bono, who benefits, who profits?: “The Washington Post has reported that the greatest beneficiaries of the change are oil and gas companies. They reported that 90 percent of [all] fines came from oil and gas companies, including from oil spills that killed millions of birds. Environmental disasters still carry legal ramifications, but the MBTA will no longer have the power to prosecute actions that incidentally harm birds.” It gets worse: Look at this gem which comes directly from the new guidelines: “a person who destroys a structure such as a barn knowing that it is full of baby owls in nests is not liable for killing them. All that is relevant is that the landowner undertook an action that did not have the killing of barn owls as its purpose.”*
In other words, as long as a person or a corporation does not have the intent to kill birds, it may kill birds. Blow open an oil well off the Jersey or Louisiana coast and kill a million seabirds, the corporation cannot be held responsible for that destruction. No fine. No requirement to rehab lost habitat.
Trump would not know a robin from a ribbon so I’m actually letting him off the hook here — this revision of the Act is pure Republican boilerplate policy: Serve money. Nature is at best an impediment.
A President Pence or Romney would likely have done the same.
And yet again, to be fair, in gutting the Treaty, the Republicans are merely practicing late stage global capitalism where everything can be a commodity or an obstacle to profit. Wildlife populations are declining in China, in India, in Brazil, in Africa. There are too many human beings, and as an apex predator of life itself, we have made ourselves into a monstrous form of locust. We gorge on life. We excrete dividends and stock options. We make deserts.
Yesterday I heard towhees for the first time this spring. Hummingbirds are in the area. More species will come once this cold barrier lifts. Birds give me joy. Millions and millions of Americans receive the same delight from them that I do. What will happen to all of us when Spring becomes as quiet as the grave. I believe we will go mad.
*The Times Picayune, April 13, 2018
