"Most astronomers counter this opinion by saying that, far from not having cleared their orbits, the major planets completely control the orbits of the other bodies within their orbital zone. Although Jupiter does coexist with a large number of small bodies in its orbit (the Trojan asteroids), these bodies only exist in Jupiter's orbit because they are in the sway of the planet's huge gravity. Similarly, Pluto may cross the orbit of Neptune, but Neptune long ago locked Pluto and its attendant Kuiper belt objects, called plutinos, into a 3:2 resonance (i.e., they orbit the Sun twice for every three Neptune orbits). Since the orbits of these objects are entirely dictated by Neptune's gravity, Neptune is therefore gravitationally dominant."
It's not a waste of the astronomers' time, because they need a reasonable taxonomy to communicate with each other. It's clear that the current set of planets are different from the things that are not planets. If we included Pluto in the set of planets, we'd need to come up with a new word to describe the subset that does not include Pluto - so it's much easier to take Pluto out of that set, and continue calling them "planets".
Other people have wasted their own time by having an emotional attachment to what words the astronomers use.
"Most astronomers counter this opinion by saying that, far from not having cleared their orbits, the major planets completely control the orbits of the other bodies within their orbital zone. Although Jupiter does coexist with a large number of small bodies in its orbit (the Trojan asteroids), these bodies only exist in Jupiter's orbit because they are in the sway of the planet's huge gravity. Similarly, Pluto may cross the orbit of Neptune, but Neptune long ago locked Pluto and its attendant Kuiper belt objects, called plutinos, into a 3:2 resonance (i.e., they orbit the Sun twice for every three Neptune orbits). Since the orbits of these objects are entirely dictated by Neptune's gravity, Neptune is therefore gravitationally dominant."
It's not a waste of the astronomers' time, because they need a reasonable taxonomy to communicate with each other. It's clear that the current set of planets are different from the things that are not planets. If we included Pluto in the set of planets, we'd need to come up with a new word to describe the subset that does not include Pluto - so it's much easier to take Pluto out of that set, and continue calling them "planets".
Other people have wasted their own time by having an emotional attachment to what words the astronomers use.