On Tuesday morning, a group of federal officials will gather at 18th and C Streets in Washington, D.C., to perform a task usually reserved for the divine. They will sit in a conference room and decide which species are permitted to continue existing on Earth, and which have become too great an inconvenience to the extraction of oil and gas. We have been trained to view these meetings as dry regulatory disputes over administrative law or the “rational” weighing of economic interests. But what