Targeting the ESA’s consultation process, the policy changes boil down to this: only when a federal agency feels their intended actions could bring about harm must they consult an outside agency like the Fish and Wildlife Service. Currently,  all of these decisions are subject to an independent scientific review.

If the ambiguity of that policy makes you uncomfortable then please raise your hand because it scares the crap out of me.

First off, our current administration has been, if anything, consistent in its attempt to sidestep environmental policy over the past seven years. Consider this, Bush’s administration has only added about 60 species to the endangered species list. That is about 10-percent of what was listed under the Clinton administration, and only about 3-percent of what the Reagan administration listed. Even George Bush’s dad added around 200 species to the list!

Wait, it gets better. This whole process is incredibly sneaky. These suggested changes are not even subject to Congressional approval. Outside of that, the Interior Department is only allowing comments on the proposal for 30 days, and in an attempt to reduce public outcry they are not accepting any comments via email - snail mail only!

If this sounds sketch, it should. With the proposed changes, for example, agencies won’t even be required to assess how their projects will contribute to global warming, or the effect of those emissions on species and habitat. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Of course, we won’t have many of those around if these changes are allowed.

Fact is, this proposal is obscene and another wicked example of the Bush administration circumventing the law. And don’t let them fool you…the consequences are grand, such that we ourselves might might make the endangered list.

Take Action:

Comment Online via the NRDC

Related Posts:

Where Issues Intertwine: Why Animals Matter
Should All Arctic Species be Listed as Endangered?
Alaska Sues to End the Polar Bear

Image source: Voices at Flickr

Via: Truthout

Image:  wikimedia commons

In the wake of this week’s unexpected resignation of EERE chief Andy Karsner, I find the below excerpt from the newsletter more than just a little interesting. Was Karsner resigning in protest to the Senate GOP’s blockage of renewable energy tax credits? Or was Karsner recognizing that all of his efforts with renewable energy were going to be all for not, because he was employed in an administration hell-bent on petroleum? Whatever the answer is, it is hard to believe all of these events are merely coincidental.

From the EERE newsletter:

U.S. Agencies Look to Oil Shale and the Arctic for Petroleum

With world oil prices near record levels, the United States is investigating ways to increase domestic petroleum production. According to DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), the United States currently consumes 24% of the world’s oil but produces only 10% of it, causing us to import about 60% of the oil we consume. One potential new source of domestic petroleum is oil shale, a fine-grained sedimentary rock containing organic matter from which oil can be produced. The largest known deposits are located in a 16,000-square-mile area covering parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, of which about 72% is on federal lands. Last week the Bureau of Land Management published proposed regulations for establishing a commercial shale oil program. Commercial development is not expected for several years, but the U.S. Department of Interior estimates that Western oil shale potentially holds 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The United States consumed about 20.7 million barrels per day in 2006, so that’s more than a century of current U.S. oil consumption. See the Interior Department press release and the EIA’s “Energy in Brief” on U.S. oil consumption.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has completed its assessment of the undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and natural gas that exists north of the Arctic Circle, an area that includes the northern one-third of Alaska. According to the USGS, about 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil lie north of the Arctic Circle, including about 30 billion barrels of oil in the “Arctic Alaska” region, which extends to the north, east, and west of Alaska. That sounds like a lot, but it’s barely four years of U.S. oil consumption. With a decreasing amount of sea ice in the Arctic, many Northern nations are now considering the future possibility of offshore oil exploration in the Arctic Circle. See the USGS “ Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal.”

Of course, other options available in the United States are increased drilling of conventional resources and reduced petroleum demand. According to the American Petroleum Institute (API), domestic oil and gas drilling is already up, with 50% more exploratory well drilled in the second quarter of 2008 than in the corresponding period a year ago. While most of that drilling is targeting natural gas, an estimated 5,219 oil wells were completed in the second quarter, marking the highest number of second-quarter oil well completions since 1986. The API also notes that U.S. oil demand was down significantly for the first half of 2008, with deliveries of all oil products down by 3%, for an average demand of 20.08 million barrels per day. As a result, U.S. oil imports sank to their lowest first-half level since 2003, at less than 13 million barrels per day. See the API press releases on the drilling activity and the petroleum demand.

Doesn’t it seem to you that it is outside the office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s scope of responsibility to be preaching about the benefits of developing oil-shale and drilling in the arctic?

Related Posts:

• Assistant Secretary of Energy Andy Karsner Announces Resignation
• Bush Administration Proposes Fire Sale of Rocky Mtns. for Oil Shale Development
• Billions of Barrels Under the Bakken Shale

When asked about the McCain statement, presidential spokeswoman Dana Perino said the recent drop in price could also be a product of diminished demand.

“I don’t know if we fully deserve the credit, but I do think that it was important to send a signal to the market that we are serious about moving forward.”

At last check, a barrel of light, sweet crude oil fell to $124.47 on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Wednesday. That’s down from more than $140 a barrel earlier in the summer.

Related Posts:

• “Bush Administration Proposes ‘Fire Sale’ of Rocky Mtns. For Oil Shale Development”
• “Bush Lifts Executive Ban on Offshore Drilling - Why it Matters and Why it Doesn’t”
• “McCain Calls for More Offshore Drilling - What Else Would he Say in Houston?”

Photo Credit: jurvetson via flickr under a Creative Commons License

Public lands within the Utah region and elsewhere have been a longtime target for oil drilling and government granted leases but always with the understand that wilderness and public lands in close proximity to national parks were typically off limits. That is, until the Bush administration decided to green light drilling near national parks in Moab, Utah in 2002. Although park scientists protested that the national parks could take decades to recover from the shock waves caused by local oil derricks, the administration claimed that parks would “barely notice changes,” according to a New York Times article published on February 8, 2002.

In February of this year, proposed oil drilling in the Great Salt Lake region was met with great resistance from residents and local and national environmental groups, such as The Friends of the Great Salt Lake and the Wilderness Conservancy who at the time I wrote this had received nearly 10,000 signatures in protest of the drilling from around the world.

Read more of this story »

The Bush administration has announced it will wave more than thirty federal laws to finish building a wall along the Mexican border by the end of this year. The Washington Post calls the move the most sweeping use of the administration’s waiver authority during the wall’s construction. The waivers allow the Bush administration to bypass mandatory reviews on how the wall will affect ecological areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. House Homeland Security Committee chair Bennie Thompson called the waiver “an extreme abuse of authority.”

Environmental groups have filed petitions challenging the waivers before the Supreme Court siting several potential ecological hazards that would be created by the fence. Biologists are especially concerned about a handful of extremely rare jaguars that prowl up from Mexico over mountain trails in some of the wildest country in the southwest.

Read more of this story »

Before going on, I’ve made a podcast of this article, and if you’d rather listen, the link is here. This story contains additional media. Click here to view the media.

It’s difficult to say which one of the two options above concerns me most, but the Bush/Cheney administration, in its own way, is about as scary as nuclear proliferation. Their environmental record may well go down in history as one of the worst ever, and there’s still plenty of time to make it even worse.

Read more of this story »

Image Credit: Rolling Stone

RS uses an article on Live Earth, the worldwide series of concerts promoting global warming awareness set to take place on July 7th on all seven continents, to lure it's music fan readers into a green frame of mind. Set to be the biggest concert in history, yet drawing fire from many environmentalists because of the massive energy resources involved in staging ten large-scale concerts (technically nine…the Antarctic show, and there is one, will probably be an intimate affair) and the real purpose of the shows. To some, they seem like just, well, big concerts. However, the article gives some reassurance from organizer Kevin Wall: "You can't depend on your governments anymore. We have to mobilize an army, and that's what we're going to start doing."

RS follows the Live Earth article with its traditional celebrity-focused pieces. In one, singer/songwriter Jack Johnson's attempt to build a green record label, Brushfire Records, and recording studio is profiled. This is followed by brief interviews on sustainability with several Live Earth musicians such as Dave Matthews, Melissa Etheridge, and John Legend. Let's just say some really know what they're talking about, and a few seem, well, still clueless. Perry Farrell's eco-style is profiled in the regular Style profile (including a very cool organic-cotton hoodie from H&M).

Just before RS gets into the meat of their issues — three features on climate change — they take a page to introduce these articles and to announce that they are the first mass-marketed magazine to be printed on carbon-neutral paper from Catalyst Paper, although they've received considerable flak for the recycled content (zero) of the paper.

To start, Eric Bates and Jeff Goodell (whom you may remember I saw a few weeks back at Wakarusa) interview Al Gore. Although Gore interviews are hardly rare since An Inconvenient Truth, Bates and Goodell do a fine job. I enjoy Gore interviews much more than any other eco-celeb, mainly because I feel he is able to combine knowlege of climate change with extensive knowledge of our political system, making him an ideal leader in the fight for real change.

RS juxtaposes the Gore interview with, ironically, an all-out assault, condemning the Bush administration, specifically Dick Cheney, and its refusal to take any type of real action on climate change. Writer Tim Dickinson goes even further, citing multiple examples of the current administration's attempt to downplay climate science and censor government scientists. Included in the article is one clever insert showing the revolving door of conflicted interests that is the environmental advisors to the Bush administration, and another chart documenting statements Bush has made about environmental policy, and the reality of what happened after those statements were made.

The trio of features ends with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s proposal for what must be done to cut carbon emissions. The five big things? Establish an emissions cap along with a global carbon market, eliminating new coal plants that don't sequester CO2 underground, build more efficient cars, ban incandescent light bulbs, and make net metering nationwide, with Kennedy explaining these ideas more fully throughout the article.

In conclusion, Rolling Stone's issue is worth the read, particularly if you were already going to check out the review of the new White Stripes album. It is more big-thinking than some other green issues, taking on policy and larger changes than just changing your light bulbs. If only it was printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink…a girl can dream, can't she?