Bush to open new front in War on Environment

MGL · Subject: Bush to open new front in War on Environment Thu Aug 14, 2008 6:59 am

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The Bush administration is proposing a major change in the way the federal government decides whether wildlife and plants deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Critics say the move, which is subject to a 30-day comment period before it can be put into effect, would dramatically weaken what has long been seen as a crucial law saving plants, animals, birds and fish from extinction.

The Interior Department unveiled a plan under which independent scientific reviews, which for three decades have been required to determine the protection status of potentially endangered species, would be eliminated. Instead, individual federal agencies would determine whether protected species would be imperiled by agency projects.

The Washington Post noted that "under current law, agencies must subject any plans that potentially affect endangered animals and plants to an independent review by the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The paper added:

Under the proposed new rules, dam and highway construction and other federal projects could proceed without delay if the agency in charge decides they would not harm vulnerable species.

It was the second time in recent months that the administration moved away from reliance on the views of government scientists to put more decision making in the hands of agencies run by political appointees.

In a key decision at the Environmental Protection Agency dealing with global warming, senior officials circumvented the recommendations of professional staff scientists and yielded to pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney's office to relax regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement the change in the way the Endangered Species Act is carried out represented "another in a continuing stream of proposals to repeal our landmark environmental laws through the back door."

Footnote: Within hours after the Associated Press reported the proposed shift, an environmental group, the Endangered Species Coalition, had used it as the basis for an e-mail fundraising appeal, saying the plan "abandons the nation's commitment to protect endangered species from global warming and fast-tracks oil and gas mining, logging and development regardless of the impacts to our nation's wildlife, fish and plants on the brink of extinction."

We have to get around those pesky polar bears blocking Alaskan drilling somehow!

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Capn_ARG

Get that bush out of office NAO

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Aris

Who needs animals and plants anyways?

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"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims."
-Aristotle

Currently reading:
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick

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Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Kamineko

I love the new rules of "If we say this is ok then it is ok!"

The supreme court would have a field day with this if it wasn't in Bush's pocket.

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The world is a mess and I just need to... rule it.

Lord Golbez · Number of posts: 132 Registration date: 2007-10-12

I wish about five of the judges on the Supreme Court would be shot the day after Bush gets out of office.