Should we rescue endangered languages?

[Anomalocaris]

I recently listened to a webcast about how Alaska has made some of its native languages official state languages, in an effort to promote efforts to conserve languages that are in danger of becoming extinct.

Is there a point to spending money to save a language from becoming extinct?

If by extinct, you mean the language stopped being used, or no longer have any native speakers, but had been well documented in a scholarly fashion, and it's oral traditional transcribed, then no, it is not worth saving from extinction, especially not by the elaborate effort of making it an official language.

But if it is threatening to go extinct before being thoroughly documented, then it is well worth the scholarly effort to thoroughly document it linguistically, and record as many of its surviving oral tradition as possible before it becomes extinct.

Basically, languages that are dying are in many cases worth recording and remembering, but not really worth saving or resuscitating.