I?ll let others decry the use of the polar bear as an unwitting pawn in the global warming debate, but I couldn?t let the following Newsweek passage escape further scrutiny.
The magazine?s latest cover story and editor Jon Meacham?s column both note the following:
Since taking office, [the Bush administration] has protected only 60 species ? compared with 522 during the Clinton administration, and 231 during the one-term administration of the first President Bush.
What does this fact tell us? How can those numbers have any meaning without context? Before you can assign any value to those figures, you need to know: how many species were offered ?protection? before the elder Bush entered office; and for how many species are advocates now seeking protection?
If I?m trying to complete a 50-state coin collection, and I?m building on the work of someone who collected the first 40, the fact that I?ve collected only eight does not constitute a ?dismal? record.
The numbers discussion also distracts from the real problems associated with the Endangered Species Act itself, as identified for Carolina Journal Radio by Rick Stroup.
