For example can you damn a stream if your neighbor's land becomes dry?

Can you destroy a species that doesn't live anywhere else?

Can you cut down all your trees and cause mud to slide into a neighbors?

Should you be allowed to build a 6 story building in a residential area?

Should you be allowed to pave over your property if it causes flooding for a neighbor?

Are plants, animals, birds, etc. worth protecting or is it their tough luck to be born on your property and they could be killed to extinction?

Saving the environment is overrated and only worth it if the cost basis is within reason.

In all of our Reagan discussions, I don't remember the terrible pollution of the 80's being brought up.

Research: Endangered mouse never existed

 

This is what prompted my question. I'm a tree hugger or environmental wacko as Rush would say. I think we have a responsibility to preserve the earth for future generations. But when I read articles like this, I begin to think we may have gone too far.

Research: Endangered mouse never existed

 

This is what prompted my question. I'm a tree hugger or environmental wacko as Rush would say. I think we have a responsibility to preserve the earth for future generations. But when I read articles like this, I begin to think we may have gone too far.

We haven't gone far enough in our protections in general, we rarely do. I don't know the specificics here but often riparian rights and landowner rights conflicts comr about when landowners try to develop the land in ways they knew they would likely be prohibited from doing, but for favorable local or fedaral political climates (see the Bush Sr. administration redefining wetlands, largely for the sake of people who wanted to make a killing developing or selling formerly protected lands).

 

New genetic and molecular tools are awesome for figuring out phyletic relationships and will revolutionize systematics. But lumpers versus splitters is nothing new in biological classification. regardless of the tools used, one generation of systematists will see two subspecies, and the next will see one, and maybe the next will see distinct sunspecies or even distinct species again... etc., etc.

 

It takes a minimum of 5 years to even come up with a federal recovery plan once a species is listed, and maybe another 5 more before it is approved and put into action. There's a big logjam of species waiting to be listed now - primarily because of conflicts like this one. With all the time it takes to get a species listed, the EPA and state agencies would do well to move a little slowly here before considering delisting.

 

At any rate, I see little compelling reason for delisting even if those two subspecies are thus far genotypically indistinguishable. There are over 2 billion nucleotides in the mouse genome, and the fact that a few loci, or few doxen loci, or a few hundred loci have been compared is statistically irrelevant. If Diversa or Celera decides its worth several millionj dollars to completely sequence bothe genomes then a cogent argument can be made.

 

At the same time, we differ from chimps by less than 0.1% genetically - according to the standerds applied for most other animals we're the same species. Does anyone agree with that assessment?

At the same time, we differ from chimps by less than 0.1% genetically - according to the standerds applied for most other animals we're the same species. Does anyone agree with that assessment?

 

I agree.

There's nothing inherently wrong with being damn smart monkeys though. We only get in trouble when we're so "smart" that we really screw up the neighborhood for the rest of the animals are that are so "dumb" that they've never do it for themselves.