You can read it here. The NYT endorses creation of the national marine monument here, and in Rose Atoll and the Line Islands (Palmyra, etc.)
What I loved most in the editorial was this bit, speaking of WESPAC's opposition to the proposal:
Wespac is notorious among environmental groups as a chronic enabler of reckless commercial fishing.
Wespac’s executive director, Kitty Simonds, is condemning this new idea as punishment of the “brown and yellow people” of American Samoa and the Northern Marianas. In fact, her agency’s customary attitude — fish here, fish now — ignores the strong local support across the Pacific for farsighted stewardship of imperiled oceans, a resource that belongs to future generations as much as it does to all of us.
The only thing I'd change in that quote is the last line: a resource that belongs to future generations as much as it does to any of us.
And to be fair, it isn't only the U.S. and WESPAC that promotes fishing recklessly.
3 Comments on 263. NYT Editorial on the proposal for a Pacific National Marine Monument, last added: 9/5/2008
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I just wanted to let you know I'm having a contest in honor of my 2nd blogaversary and hoped you wouldn't mind spreading the word!
http://writtenwyrdd.typepad.com/writtenwyrdd/2008/08/2-year-bloggave.html#comments
"Punishment of the brown and yellow people".. wow, if that's not racist. What about the really dark Carolinians? "The blackies"?
Lil, I think WESPAC was trying to say that the monument proposal is racist, but in fact showed their own underbelly!