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Environment BLOG |
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Parrots and small liberties.
By: Josh Trevino
6.6.2007 7:49:00 PM
Anyone who's ever walked through the city park near the Ferry Building (itself mere minutes from the PRI SF offices) has seen the San Franciscans merrily feeding and admiring the flocks of parrots who grace the city. Made famous by the documentary, "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill," the parrots are now an attraction unto themselves, and deservedly so: they are intelligent, engaging, and sociable animals. Now, however, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is enforcing an end to the feeding of the parrots, apparently on the grounds that the feeding over-domesticates the birds. The proper responses are: 1) so what? and 2) is this a good use of the city's time and energy? The answer to the latter is an emphatic "no." Any urban environment has its population of adapted animals, from pigeons to rats to the famous San Francisco sea lions; and the parrots are no different. Given that their native habitat is apparently Ecuador, the idea that they ought to be preserved in their natural, "wild" state in the city of San Francisco(!) is absurd. Their world is already radically altered from what it once was. Let people feed the parrots if they wish. It's not just an issue of a petty freedom: they are our guests and neighbors -- and more to the point, there's no good reason not to.
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Wrestling with climate change at NASA
By: K. Lloyd Billingsley
6.1.2007
"I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of the Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had, and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change." Michael Griffin, NASA administrator, said that on National Public Radio's May 31 "Morning Edition" program. NASA's Jim Hansen did not like his boss's statement.
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