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Fishing for Common Sense
Introducing the world's first politically incorrect restaurant.
For the entree', choose between a nice Asian carp simmered in butter and freshly-melted Michigan lake-effect snow or a mess of Delta smelt cooked over a fire of California almond wood. For an appetizer, let's go with shredded environmental hypocrisy.
Now for the dinner theater part of your dining experience.
The Delta smelt, a three-inch minnow found only in the San Francisco Bay Delta in California, is vitally important to the federal government and lawyer-dominated groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity (a group that takes credit for stopping Western lumbering activities because of the Mexican Spotted Owl). It's so important, in fact, that water was cut off from a huge area of California's San Joaquin Valley, forcing many farmers to cut down their almond trees, which were already dying from thirst due to drought and previous environmental litigation.
The problem, apparently, was that the tiny fish was getting sucked into pumps that sent the water to farms and communities. And because the smelt was labeled a crucial indicator of environmental conditions - kind of like a canary in a coal mine - its decline was immediately branded a tragedy that would lead to environmental catastrophe, even though as far as we can tell, 12 other fish species have already disappeared from the Delta, and Armageddon is still at least a day away.
In Act Two of this dinner show, we return to Michigan, where another fish, the Asian carp, an invasive trash fish that leaps from the water when disturbed, threatens to escape from the Chicago River and into Lake Michigan, where it's certain to eat everything in its path, since it has no natural predators and has the appetite of a politician feeding on campaign contributions.
Unlike the smelt litigation, a lawsuit over the carp, filed by Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox just before Christmas, is designed to stop real damage to thousands of real people and real economic systems whose futures float on and in the lake.
If left to continue its journey through a system of locks that diverts Lake Michigan water to Chicago through the man-made Chicago River, the carp will almost certainly destroy Michigan's $7-billion fishing industry, which includes tourism, and even agri-tourism. Just what Michigan needs.
But soon after Cox filed the suit - and received support from Ontario and every Great Lakes state except Illinois (the adopted home of our President) the Obama Administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court, in essence saying it didn't like the idea of closing the locks. Sure, it might stop economic and ecological disaster in the world's largest freshwater resource, but hundreds of people in Illinois would be inconvenienced.
Funny how economics can turn so quickly on a political dime. Why is it OK to push whole economic engines into extinction (California reportedly provides 90 percent of the world's almonds), cause tens of thousands of jobs to be lost and cause thousands of acres of carbon-sequestering trees to be cut and burned because of a three-inch fish? And why is it not OK to take preventive action to preserve a $7 billion industry, reservoir of the world's future water needs?
To be fair, the minnow's near demise has led to environmental degradation. But it's been man-made. If the smelt had just been allowed to die, thousands of California farm workers would still have work and would actually contribute to the economy instead of sucking indefinitely from the government's teat. The nutritious almond would remain a strong creator of economic activity. Almond trees would still suck carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into oxygen.
The advantage we have here is that we can still stop this Asian trash fish, but we need to do it fast. Cox's insistence that we close the locks, while inconvenient for Chicago, is the right thing to do, environmentally and economically.
Here's where the show ends and the house lights come on. Now you can see that the check is already here. Look it over carefully, and you'll be baffled. In California, apparently, a minnow takes precedence over people. Makes sense, since that's part of the environmental lobby's guiding principle. But from Michigan's lake-front view, Illinois's selfishness trumps an entire region's environment and economy.
We can't afford to swallow this hypocrisy any longer. To his credit, Cox has asked that Governor Granholm join him in a meeting with President Obama to try to convince him that Michigan's preventive action - closing those locks - is the best way to go.
I don't know what they'll serve for dinner at this meeting, but let's hope it's not the last Lake Michigan perch. Might I suggest crow garnished with almonds and, for dessert, a big scoop of mouth-watering governmental common sense.
Oops. Sorry. That's not on the menu. That went extinct long ago.
P.S.: Illinois accounts for only 63 of the 10,000 miles of Great Lakes shoreline, yet today controls the fate of the entire Great Lakes basin.
Attorney General Cox has created a Web site, www.stopasiancarp.com, for citizens to sign an online petition, the results of which will be used to show Illinois and federal authorities that they must look at the needs of the entire Great Lakes basin.
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