Long unable to simply overturn the nation's keystone species protection law, the Endangered Species Act (turns out the American public more or less likes protecting endangered species), the ESA's enemies are instead making a late-term end run around it. The Bush administration announced yesterday that it's floating a raft of changes to the rules that currently require federal agencies to consult government scientists on whether a particular project -- a mall, a dam, a highway, etc. -- would harm endangered plants and critters -- and factor their opinions into whether or not the projects are approved. Under the proposed upending, agencies would no longer have to seek these consultations. This rules massacre would also prohibit agencies from considering a project's impact on global warming as part of its analysis.
The Associated Press reports in part that:Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne defended the revisions, saying they were needed to ensure that the Endangered Species Act would not be used as a "back door" to regulate the gases blamed for global warming.
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"We need to focus our efforts where they will do the most good," Kempthorne said in a news conference arranged hastily after the AP reported details of the proposal. "It is important to use our time and resources to protect the most vulnerable species. It is not possible to draw a link between greenhouse gas emissions and distant observations of impacts on species."
The rule changes unveiled Monday would apply to any project a federal agency would fund, build or authorize that the agency itself determines is unlikely to harm endangered wildlife and their habitat. Government wildlife experts currently participate in tens of thousands of such reviews each year.
The revisions also would limit which effects can be considered harmful and set a 60-day deadline for wildlife experts to evaluate a project when they are asked to become involved. If no decision is made within 60 days, the project can move ahead.
"If adopted, these changes would seriously weaken the safety net of habitat protections that we have relied upon to protect and recover endangered fish, wildlife and plants for the past 35 years," said John Kostyack, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation's Wildlife Conservation and Global Warming initiative.
[...]
"We need to focus our efforts where they will do the most good," Kempthorne said in a news conference arranged hastily after the AP reported details of the proposal. "It is important to use our time and resources to protect the most vulnerable species. It is not possible to draw a link between greenhouse gas emissions and distant observations of impacts on species."
The rule changes unveiled Monday would apply to any project a federal agency would fund, build or authorize that the agency itself determines is unlikely to harm endangered wildlife and their habitat. Government wildlife experts currently participate in tens of thousands of such reviews each year.
The revisions also would limit which effects can be considered harmful and set a 60-day deadline for wildlife experts to evaluate a project when they are asked to become involved. If no decision is made within 60 days, the project can move ahead.
"If adopted, these changes would seriously weaken the safety net of habitat protections that we have relied upon to protect and recover endangered fish, wildlife and plants for the past 35 years," said John Kostyack, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation's Wildlife Conservation and Global Warming initiative.
What "back door," Mr. Kempthorne. The ESA, the Clean Air Act, and other enviro-legislative milestones of the 1970's were intentionally written to be adaptable to new, better knowledge and understanding of how endangered species and human health are affected by pollutants that were not yet understood or discovered when they were enacted.
Secondly, it's impossible to prove direct links between global warming and just about anything happening in the immediate present. Why? Because there is a huge amount of "noise" in the moment, including the weather, the sun's activity, a volcano erupting on the other side of the globe, etc., that can play into current climate conditions. However, it's perfectly good science to make inferences based on observations of current conditions combined with the accepted understanding that human-caused (anthropogenic) global warming is underway (that "signal" has emerged through the noise in the past two decades of scientific research into climate change). This sort of application of knowledge is what credible researchers -- the kinds of scientists who consult on endangered species, say -- do for a living.
So here, Mr. Kempthorne is attempting to cloud the issue with a rhetorical maneuver that could confuse a public not well-versed in how science works. (Some might call it lying by inference.)
Cutting greenhouse gas emissions due to their harm to threatened and endangered species would not be a "back door" to GHG regulation. It would be perfectly legal. It's understandably frustrating for supporters of unbridled fossil fuel use, drilling, building, damming and mining that the Supreme Court itself has upheld the legality of assessing and (possibly) regulating GHGs under the Clean Air Act. Chances are that if challenged, it would be found legal under the ESA as well.
But since they can't win on the merits of their arguments, they're trying to rewrite how those laws are implemented, instead.
Dear readers, it would be worth it to take some of our attention off shopping for organic cotton T-shirts and biodegradable countertop wipes (Method's are made of bamboo, I discovered yesterday), at least for a while, and keep track of this Hail Mary pass against the Endangered Species Act by the Bush administration.
Image: Last December, protesting Polar Bears demanded that the United Nations Climate Change Conference "Save Humans Too." Mighty fine of them. More info:www.oxfam.org/climatechange. Credit: Ng Swan Ti/Oxfam/flickr
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