The wall will improve the environment.
Donald Trumps Green Wall
By Steve Milloy
Breitbart.com, August 17, 2016
The open-borders crowd has enlisted the help of the greens to stop a potential President Donald Trump’s wall. The title of a “news” article in the British science journal Nature says it all: “Trump’s border-wall pledge threatens delicate desert ecosystems.”
The Nature article frets that the 1,900-mile-long wall “would be a huge loss” by restricting the movement of wildlife between the U.S. and Mexico.
What will the bighorn sheep living on either side of the border do if their “cross-border connections” are blocked? What happens to the populations of jaguars, ocelots, and bears that are split up by the border? Black bears, re-established in West Texas during the 1990s, will be “at risk” if links with Mexican bears are cut. Rarely-flying or low-flying birds, like roadrunners and pygmy owls, “could also have trouble surmounting the wall.”
Meep-meep! Hold on a minute. Is this the end of the local ecosystem as we know it? No.
Yes, the wall will alter the local ecosystem to some degree — just like any and every construction project. Once construction is complete, however, a new ecosystem will develop and flourish. The new ecosystem will be as equally wonderful as the old ecosystem. It will just be different.
Believe it or not, local ecosystems have previously survived manmade walls. The Great Wall of China is about 13,000 miles long, at heights topping 25 feet. The Roman-built Hadrian’s Wall and Antonine Wall cut across Britain at heights reaching 20 feet. Then there are ecosystem-disrupting works like the Suez Canal, Panama Canal, the world’s great dams, and the systems of levees and dikes keeping New Orleans and the Netherlands above water. You can bet that draining the Maryland-Virginia marshes to build Washington D.C. changed that ecosystem. Ever been to Los Angeles or New York City? Talk about ecosystem disruption.
Even wind and solar farms change the ecosystem. Just ask any green activist who, despite the political correctness of wind and solar power, uses the federal court system to block such projects on the grounds that they will harm the ecosystem — where “harm” is defined as “change.”
While there are no merits to the claim that the Trump Wall will hurt the local ecosystem to a greater degree than any other construction project, what there will be is a tortuous process to get it built.
Whatever part of the federal government is tasked with constructing the wall, it will be forced under current law to develop an “environmental impact statement” (EIS) as required by the ill-conceived and often-abused National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 — think Keystone XL pipeline. NEPA requires the government to produce an EIS virtually any time government action will affect the environment. The law empowers greens to block projects interminably based on the flimsiest of junk science-fueled arguments — like those offered in the Nature article against Trump’s wall.
If the Trump Wall is to be built in our lifetime, a President Trump and Republican-controlled Congress will have to enact wall-enabling legislation that overrides the NEPA and the ridiculous EIS requirement.
Our porous border has facilitated much law-breaking and danger — from illegal immigration to drug smuggling — for which all of us pay a heavy price in terms of tax dollars, local safety, and national security. We will all be richer and safer to the extent that the Trump Wall can help reduce the costs associated with these problems.
And since wealthier societies tend to be cleaner and have the best environmental protection, the Trump Wall would actually be a boon to the environment. And that is what the greens care about, right?
Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com.
yeah, I’m sure those thousands of invaders tramping through the desert are helping the environment.
The only successful was in recent history is the wall between the East and West Germany.
It was successful, not because it could not be climbed, but because it stalled the climbers, that is the ones who had survived the mine fields, long enough to be shot.
Is this what we ant the US to become?
T…R…U…M…P!!!!!!
Sadly this discussion is a waste of time. Trump doesn’t have a shot at president, and his wall is a pipe dream either way.
The aspect of a stacked Supreme Court is reason to leave this beautiful country when US Sovereignty will disappear and UN Apparatchiks run all aspects of our lives!! You think its bad now—see what these power hungry liberals under Soros have in store for us.
We managed without a wall for 200+ years. We need it now because Washington stopped enforcing immigration law. Washington could end the need for the wall today if they wanted to. They don’t want to.
I like Trump’s idea of making illegal immigration illegal. I know – call me radical.
I have been asking people who think the “wall” is a bad idea if they have locking doors on their homes, and if so why? The stuttering nonsense that follows is fun.
All politicians betray you. It is their nature.
Steve – c’mon, is this a joke or something? Am I missing something here? I do not think you can cure green stupidity by still bigger stupidity.
Great point.
“There have been no ecological effects in our country from the uncontrolled ingress of 12+ million illegal (law breaking!) aliens that Obama and friends have helped to stroll acrossed the border?”
Everyone knows that the immigrants carry out all garbage and clean up after themselves……just like the Obama inauguration crowds and Earth Day attendees cleaned up after themselves in DC. NOT!!
I thought a border wall had already been started…..just not completed.
Why “new” permits? Won’t the old “approvals” still work?
What are all those pictures we see of illegals climbing over existing walls?
There have been no ecological effects in our country from the uncontrolled ingress of 12+ million illegal (law breaking!) aliens that Obama and friends have helped to stroll acrossed the border?
I believe that would be an excellent opportunity to use executive action to cut through the bull citing national security, human trafficking (slavery), gun trafficking and human destruction of the fragile desert environment by illegals driving on, littering, spreading human disease to animals through poor sanitation because they just poop right out there in the desert w/o proper sanitation…..