Our World and Everything in It

A U.S. District Court judge has ordered the Bush Administration to stop stalling on adding polar bears to the endangered species list. The Endangered Species Act requires that the decision be made on the latest scientific evidence. And the evidence gets clearer everyday. The deadline for this order is May 15^th. If it’s ignored it’s back to court.

The NRDC, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Greenpeace sued the Bush administration because it violated the law by missing its January deadline to add animals to the endangered list and is still dragging its feet while continuing to sell oil leases in the Arctic area. Can the dots get any bigger.

This administration is catering to oil, ignoring the Supreme Court’s warnings, appointing cronies for his cause in departments like the Dept. of the Interior, the EPA, etc., and most of all ignoring our petitions, as well as science. There is little doubt we have been lied to about climate change also.

Now it’s up the Dept. of the Interior to decide about the list, and Secy. of Interior, Kempthorne has already ignored thousands of petitions relative to all types of wildlife abuse. And this judge says he’s already in violation of the law already. What a guy! If the deadline is ignored, it’s back to court.  

Quite frankly, I wouldn’t keep pushing the envelope with the courts. They’ve been pro-environment lately with the U.S. Supreme court ruling against the EPA that they will use their authority to regulate CO2 emissions from autos. The U.S. Court of Appeals was angry when it vacated the EPA’s Clean Air Mercury Rule, calling its cap and trade program for mercury nothing but moving the pollution around, and ditto for vacating the EPA’s Incinerator Rule. The outcome of that court session cost the coalburning industry big time. In less than two years the EPA must come up with new standards for mercury emissions relative to the coal industry, no cap and trade allowed.

And now the courts are drawn into the Endangered Species arena where Earthjustice has stopped the wolf kill that failed to be stopped by the Dept. of Interior despite scientific data, and this current court action on behalf of the polar bears filed by the NRDC. CBD, and Greenpeace. I’d be looking over my shoulder for a big boot if I were Kempthorne. On behalf of the animals, I hope he gets it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24369059/

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Alaska, Animals in Peril, Arctic Oil Drilling, Bush Administration, Conservation, Dept. of the Interior, Endangered Species, Environmental Legislation, Environmental Spin, Environmentalism, Federal Government, Global Warming, Greenpeace, Industry, Legislators, NRDC, Polar Bears, Politics, Science, Secy. Kempthorne. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.