[quotemstr]

Sure. Nobody's arguing against responsible stewardship. What seems to rile people up is the idea that protecting the environment is an instrumental, not a terminal value, and that we can and should trade off environmental protection (here, endangered species) for other things that people find important.

Lots of people see environmental protection as a terminal value instead, and few things offend people more than proposals to trade off terminal values for instrumental ones.

[rickycook]

that might be true, but what’s definitely true is that the environment is not winning... we regularly trade environment for industry, and rarely do the reverse. only recently have we decided that sustainable sources of electricity/industry are worthwhile, and still many times have to use economic arguments to justify it.