Environmental groups recently filed suit in federal court alleging that the Department of the Interior was wrong to hold that the placement of polar bears on the endangered species list does not mandate the regulating of greenhouse gases. The Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the plaintiffs in the case, argue that because the polar bears are endangered due to the effects of global warming (i.e., melting Arctic sea ice), that the result of their addition to the list requires the taking of measures to decrease the causes of global warming.
Interior Department Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, holding the same point of view as President Bush, argues that the Endangered Species Act was not intended to address global warming and that climate policy should instead be enacted through the political process. The policies surrounding the inclusion of polar bears on the protected list has already proven to be quite controversial.
Bush Administration officials at the Fish and Wildlife Service ruled that the oil companies working on the Northwest Alaskan coast by the Chukchi Sea would be protected from liability if they accidentally harmed endanged polar bears or pacific walruses. This ruling applies to the seven oil companies that paid $2.6 billion in a government auction for the right to drill in this region. Ten percent of the polar bears in the arctic live in this area.
The Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision is not a blank check to harm the bears, as the oil companies will be required to study the location of the bears’ dens and train their employees on measures to protect the bears. In return, the companies will be protected if they unintentionally hurt a bear or walrus.
Apparently this is not the first time oil companies have been granted similar immunity-as they enjoyed this type of protection in the same region from 1991 to 1996. Additionally, no polar bear deaths have been attributed to oil company action in Alaska since 1993 and only two have been known to be have been killed since 1960.
A report was recently released by NASA’s inspector general dealing with the agency’s efforts in 2004 through 2006 to restrict the flow of information regarding climate change.The report concluded that the agency’s Office of Public Affairs was inappropriately influenced by politics and “reduced, marginalized or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public.”The report placed responsibility primarily on the Office of Public Affairs and did not identify higher members in the agency or other Bush Administration officials as being responsible for these actions.
Regardless of whether there were directions from higher ups in the administration to suppress climate change science, these actions seem in line with the administration’s general policies towards science, and climate change in particular.Fortunately NASA has dealt with these past problems, and Bush will soon be replaced by a leader more friendly towards science.Hopefully that leader will let the scientists do what they do best, without imposing a political agenda on top of their work.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear a case involving utility company efforts to overturn an environmentally friendly holding by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.The dispute in the case involves an EPA regulation that permitted energy companies to avoid the most costly technologies (closed-cycle cooling systems) that protect aquatic life in rivers and lakes surrounding power plants.The harm at issue stems from the process by which power plants take water from surrounding sources in order to cool the plant’s operations.Unfortunately, without this costly technological feature, this process does substantial damage to the aquatic life.
The Bush Administration put in place a rule that allowed these companies to undertake a case-by-case cost-benefit analysis in determining to what extent the damage to aquatic life should be mitigated by technology.Environmental groups sued, claiming that the Clean Water Act requires the use of the more expensive and effective technology, and the Circuit Court agreed—specifically holding that it was not clear that the costs of this technology could not be reasonably borne by the industry.
Although the Supreme Court will consider overruling this decision when the case comes before it, if the next president disagrees with this Bush Administration pro-business policy, the issue could quickly become moot, as the regulation could be overturned by the EPA.
Sticking with our California vs. the federal government theme, the EPA released a “final decision” on Friday stating that California cannot regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles more strictly than the system set up by the federal government.
The head of the EPA, in ignoring the advice of his senior staff, ruled that since the purpose of the proposed state law was to address global warming and that since the consequences of global warming were not unique to California, that the proposed law must be preempted by the EPA’s own set of rules which are much more relaxed.(Apparently under the federal Clean Air Act, a state must have “compelling and extraordinary conditions” in order to permit an environmental law to be more stringent than the parallel federal regulation.)
Not surprisingly, the National Automobile Dealers Association fully supports the EPA’s ruling, issuing the following statement:“Any regulation of motor vehicle greenhouse gases should be done at the federal, not state, level.” (more…)
The U.S. Forest Service’s plan to open half a million acres of California wilderness to roads and oil drilling has spurred a lawsuit from the state.This comes on the heels of litigation between the two parties over the EPA’s preemption of California’s more stringent fuel efficiency laws.Specifically, this new lawsuit claims that the Forest Service violated federal law by not properly informing the state of potential environmental impacts from the proposal and for failing to work with the state’s laws and policies, which have banned this type of road construction since 2006. (more…)
