You gotta choose
I didn’t know Scott Pruitt had invoked the bible in his move to gut the EPA.
Pruitt used a story from the Book of Joshua to help explain the new policy.
On the journey to the promised land, “Joshua says to the people of Israel: choose this day whom you are going to serve,” Pruitt said. “This is sort of like the Joshua principle — that as it relates to grants from this agency, you are going to have to choose either service on the committee to provide counsel to us in an independent fashion or chose the grant. But you can’t do both. That’s the fair and great thing to do.”
Yet he is appointing people from industry to the panels. He’s pretending to think that EPA grants distort the research of scientists but also that a salary from an industry that the EPA regulates does not distort or shape the views of industry shills. Scientists have to choose between grants and panels, but industry shills don’t have to choose between salaries and panels.
“Greed is good.” I’m sure that’s in the bible somewhere.
Of course he doesn’t mention those parts of the Bible that mention stewardship…
Personally, I find the Bible distasteful and full of bad advice, but if you’re going to quote it, at least recognize that what you’ve chosen to quote is almost certainly contradicted somewhere else, probably in the very next verse.
Funny how many of them can’t recall the whole “eye of a needle” thing when it comes to the rich getting into heaven.
Come now, YNnB?, you know that the Bible is the literal word of God when it suits, and analogy or parable or mumblemumblesomething when it doesn’t.
“This is sort of like the Joshua principle”.
No it isn’t. That’s either a terrible analogy or…. something much worse. Or both. I think it’s both.
It’s about choosing a particular god instead of other ones, after all. If you work the analogy though, he’s saying that either you agree with his view (fuck the environment) or you don’t get to have a say on the policy that affects it.
I mean, it’s obvious to absolutely everyone that that’s exactly what he intends, but he doesn’t even have the skill to use a metaphor that actually obscures that.
‘Stewardship’ in the Bible has been used to describe what grownups call looting and pillaging. There was, perhaps still is, a ‘Wise Use’ movement in western states that pretty much duplicates the thinking of the Bundy clan.
@John:
Yeah, it’s easy to embrace the tragedy of the commons as not a tragedy when you think you won’t have to suffer the consequences.
You know, even if there were a god and even if there were the slightest chance I’d get RAPTURE’D, I wouldn’t go because I’d be worried about all the organisms that got left behind. I’d want to help the rest of the unraptured try to sort this shit out.
John the Drunkard – I would agree with you fully on that; the lefties use it, the right wing uses it, and for totally opposite purposes. That’s why I don’t get my environmental spidey-sense from the Bible, but from the years of careful study and work that went into making me a professional environmental scientist. For that reason, Pruitt would consider me unqualified for his EPA, though I have received no grants. He would probably cite my previous experience working on EPA projects as a disqualifier, though I received no EPA money.