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Fascinating, if noxious, discursive turn: appropriation of "DEI" to characterize conservation
"We’re going to change nature?” Kennedy said in a speech before the Senate. “We’re going to control our environment to this extent? We’re going to pass DEI for owls?”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/31/senate-barred-northern-spotted-owls
@inquiline the first two questions sound more like he's talking about geoengineering (just read Carton and Malm's _The Long Heat_ on this, highly recommend)
This is the full quote:
“The barred owls are not hurting anybody. They’re just doing what nature teaches them to do. We’re going to change nature?” Kennedy said in a speech before the Senate. “We’re going to control our environment to this extent? We’re going to pass DEI for owls?”
i don't think it helps to decontextualize it, actually
@inquiline and as the article goes on to note, we (humanity) did in fact already change nature:
"The spotted owl has been imperiled over the years, facing major habitat loss as logging and development destroyed old growth forests in the Pacific north-west."
strange that this is what the senator sees as the bridge too far, the line not to cross...
(first, i doubt it makes sense to take anything he has to say about this in good faith)
second, from research i've read, how xtian right frames climate or conservation interventions starts with accepting that god granted dominion over the earth, so if he were sincere about that (which he isn't), there is grounds to intervene
(third, i'd caution against a universal "we". lots of human-led changes to nature do not create existential threat; & not all humans created fossil fuel crisis)
but part of what interests me in what he says in the piece is also that it pegs DEI to thwarting "survival of the fittest"/upending a supposed natural order
as i said, ugly, but interesting
@inquiline DEI for owls unironically
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