It's funny how your reasoning processes as well as your prejudices can be affected by your interests and what you feel strongly about.

We all know how we tend to look the other way when it's our own comfort and prosperity that are at risk, it's a question all honest people have wrestled with, and its one we all have probably harbored contradictions about. The product you enjoy or the industry that contributes to your livelihood pollutes or is unsafe, and somehow it doesn't seem too bad. I'm all in favor of low income housing and a halfway house for convicts, but not in my back yard! I know guns should be outlawed, as long as mine is the last one to be confiscated! I know power boaters should be licensed for the public's safety but that sailors should be exempt from the expense and inconvenience because they are naturally better seamen...

But it isn't just a dollars and cents issue, or a personal security and lifestyle problem. I firmly believe that protecting habitat for an endangered species, or the respect owed to native sacred grounds, trumps the desire to develop a piece of ground for commercial use; but if they want to erect a major astronomical observatory on an optimum observing site, I say to hell with the fuzzy-wuzzies and the aboriginal graves. The use of plutonium power plants is certainly a risky proposition, but in the case of interplanetary probes, it's a risk I'm willing to take. I could go on, and you can probably add to the list.

Just something to think about.