• Pacific situation not as desperate as described Pacific situation not as desperate as described Keith Robinson spares us discussion of the “grim facts” forcing his conclusion that some 1964 calamity (Civil Rights Act?), was the “point of no return.” Now,
• Pacific situation not as desperate as described
Pacific situation not as desperate as described
Keith Robinson spares us discussion of the “grim facts” forcing his conclusion that some 1964 calamity (Civil Rights Act?), was the “point of no return.” Now, the U.S. is “doomed to fall.”
A Mideast nuclear war is inevitable, as are the rise to power of socialists ardent to dump the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the Pacific’s imminent status as a Russian/Chinese pond. To delay this dire fate, no expansion of the Papahanaumoku Marine Monument should infringe the U.S. Navy’s training activities. (Incidentally, much of Niihau’s income derives from military contracts.)
A devout and successful environmentalist, Mr. Robinson staunchly opposes environmental legislation. “Environmental extremists are wasting large sums of public money in expensive and completely useless habitat listings. The real truth is that Hawaii’s endangered plants are biologically incompetent. … They evolved for millions of years in benign isolation, where there were no significant threats or competition.
“Thus they lost their biological efficiency and were rapidly overwhelmed when thousands of efficient and aggressive species were introduced that evolved in the savage competition of continental ecosystems. They will relentlessly continue to decline to extinction in the wild, no matter how much alleged ‘critical habitat’ is designated by lines drawn on maps. Meanwhile, the environmental establishment has created a weird mixture of quackery, propaganda, supposition and wishful thinking … .” Why bother to protect pathetic species and fishing stock from natural extinction by more efficient humans?
I value facts and opinions from all sides concerning the complex issues of expanding the Papahanaumoku Marine Monument: local economies against global industries; native Hawaiian culture; fishery economics and fishing stock for the next generations; balancing military and environmental concerns; etc.
A anti-government zealot’s parade of horribles, defeatist apocalyptic world view, and vision of rabid socialists seeking only to trash American values upwelling from the coral, did not help me understand the pros and cons.
Jed Somit, Kapaa
