Our modern environment
Biodiversity Hotspots
The 25 richest and most threatened reservoirs of plant and animal life on Earth. As a reasonably fervent environmentalist, I find information sources like this ever more important to inform as many people as possible with, as I watch our current administration systematically exploiting, tarnishing, and often utterly destroying every last vestige of beautiful, pristine wilderness we have left in the name of Corporate America.
Pardon me while I Barf.
I love our national parks and vast wilderness preserves, and can't for the life of me understand what Bush and his flunkies have against them. Are they somehow unmoved by the vast and unspeakable majesty of Mother Nature's creations? Do the words "for purple mountain majesties" hold no meaning for them, or have they merely forgotten one of our country's defining melodies? Have they never felt the sense of awe-inspiring insignificance of self when standing alone, surrounded by 14,000 foot peaks of rock and snow, amidst untouched forests of countless age and the astounding sense of peace such a sight can bring?
Or perhaps it frightens them. Perhaps they are such small-minded individuals that the knowledge that nothing they could ever do could rival such beauty, or be as impressive, and in reflexive, impotent anger they feel that they must place their mark upon every last inch of it to prove their superiority? Perhaps they've been so brainwashed by their religious beliefs that they actually believe that the earth was put here for the sole purpose of serving their every need and desire, and they are therefor free to (indeed intended to) exploit it as they please? Or maybe it's out of simple spite - hate for those freakish, lefty hippy environmentalists who seem to fight their every desire brings out their inner grade-school bully, who says 'I am stronger than you, and will destroy everything you hold dear merely because I can.' Whatever their misguided reasoning may be, it proves beyond a doubt that they cannot do the job for which they were elected, which is to represent ALL of their electorate. For we, the electorate, don't want every last piece of untouched natural beauty in our vast country invaded and destroyed before we, much less our children, have a chance to see it, feel it, experience it, drink deep of its magnificence and incorporate the wonder we feel into ourselves.

No matter your beliefs on the war, the economy, or any other issue du jour that Bush advances, if we don't remove this man from office, after another 4 years of his misguided stewardship, you'll have to go to another country to find real untouched wilderness. And even that might not help. Every national park will be enhanced by the smoke and noise of 4-wheelers, jetskis, and snowmobiles, 24-hour floodlights of oil and natural gas derricks, massive leaking oil pipelines, clearcut forests, and the eerie silence of a lack of the animals they drove out. Not to mention the lower air quality in our cities, reduced action against companies who spill into or otherwise pollute their neighboring communities (or even worse, coverups of the same), and outright lying about the people's safety after major disasters.

Please. Let us stop this.
Here are some great, non-extremist places to start:
National Audubon Society - a fantastic magazine, btw, with well-written informative articles, and wonderful photographs.
Sierra Club
National Wildlife Federation

Further reading:
The extinction crisis is over. We lost.
NASA's Earth Observatory
Bush administration's destructive environmental policies
How the White House deals with science it doesn't like - and this
Bush national forest policy
- posted by Hoff @ 12:20 PM