Everytime someone wants to build something, environmentalists step in to save the spotted mole rat, or some such animal. The environment is precious, they insist, and it must be protected.

So it is shocking, nay even appalling, that they have not protested the latest reports (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070205/ap_on_re_us/risky_levees;_ylt=AsuFMyKM5hANv8BfaATiH.PMWM0F;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg--) that California and other states are at risk from failing levees. Restoring wetlands would be a priority, one would think, for these tree huggers, even if those wetlands happen to overtake their favorite bistro.

But as usual, environmentalists are demanding that we make sacrifices they aren't personally willing to make. Rather than demand we allow the levees to fail and the wetlands to be reclaimed, they are demanding the federal government "do something" to protect their homes that they were foolish enough to build in floodplains in the first place.

And such is the inconsistency of the environmental movement. They demand WE aren't doing enough (Excuse me? My family of 8 spends about $50 a month on electricity. I don't see how we could reduce that, honestly); they demand that OUR lifestyles are having an impact on global warming, but that somehow, theirs are not. Not ALL environmentalists are this way, mind you, but most of those pushing for legislation to reduce emissions are.

If the environmentalists want to do something healthy for the environment, they should allow the levees to fail entirely without warning. As the houses are flooded, the dead and decaying will make wonderful organic matter to feed the animals that move in to fill the new watershed, and the watershed will be restocked with life at a rapid rate. Some communities may even be in the enviable position to provide reef building material as well.

The reason environmentalists consider this solution unthinkable, as do the rest of us, is painfully obvious: because the environmentalists largely do not believe their own hype. If the destruction of the planet was truly imminent, giving way to entropy would be the most effective solution.