Finally, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is reviewing the status of the Pacific walrus to determine whether or not the marine mammal will receive Endangered Species Act protections.

The Center for Biological Diversity stated that the Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) is facing a double threat to its ice habitat: Global warming and increased oil development.

A petition seeking protection for the Pacific walrus was submitted by the Center back in February 2008. After the USFWS failed to respond to the petition, the Center filed a lawsuit - prompting the USFWS to take action.

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Power plants play a huge role in emitting pollutants that make up the ozone. This pollution browns and blackens our horizons. We call it smog. Smog has been linked to premature deaths, thousands of emergency room visits, and tens of thousands of asthma attacks each year. Pollution in the ozone is particularly dangerous to small children and the elderly, who are often warned to stay indoors on days with poor air quality due to pollutants.

Not only are the pollutants spewed out by power plants bad for our health, but they contain greenhouse gases that have been linked with climate change; thus they are killing the world as we know it as well.

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New York’s Environmental Board adopted stricter air pollution rules that limit how much pollution power plants and factories can release into the air.

Under these regulations, new industrial plants — as well as existing ones — will have to install new pollution regulators. The rules are set to go in effect in March. Not surprisingly, they are stricter than those of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Um, duh!

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[Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. Creative Commons photo by Don Pugh]

De Christopher was headed to the Bureau of Land Management auction not to disrupt it but to protest. When he discovered how easy it was to go inside and become a bidder, he grabbed a bidding paddle and went for it. He now faces prosecution, though charges probably won’t be named until after the holidays.

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On Thursday, Assistant Interior Secretary Lyle Laverty ordered the National Park Service to ease existing mountain biking restrictions, possibly opening nearly eight million acres of recommended or proposed wilderness lands in approximately 30 parks to mountain biking.

The Bush administration has released several controversial rule changes and “clarifications” over the last few months that have put even the most critical of Bush’s environmental record into a state of disbelief at the potential environmental consequences of those regulations. But this one is a little different.

The rule change issued Thursday pits the sometimes-allied (non-motorized) recreational environmentalists against the “preservationists,” who see the rule change as just another human incursion into pristine areas that would further degrade its ecological integrity. Opponents argue that mountain biking can lead to erosion thus threatening stream health and that mountain bikers are often at the root of on-trail conflicts with hikers and horseback riders.

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The legislation had little to say about fuel efficiency, electric or hybrid cars, or the feasibility that a loan to GM will do anything to resurrect the struggling company.  In regard to emerging technologies, the legislation requires merely that GM “intend” to “commence domestic manufacturing of advanced technology vehicles.”

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The Bush administration chalked up another in a growing list of environmentally ignorant midnight rulings by “clarifying” a rule that could allow the approval of several new coal-fired power plants.

Instead of decommissioning America’s fleet of coal-fired power plants and making concerted efforts to prevent the construction of any new ones, the United States Government is finding ways to make sure plenty more can be built. In a memo issued by EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson on Thursday, the Bush administration has “clarified” a rule prohibiting any federal agency from denying an operating permit to new or significantly remodeled power plants based on their carbon dioxide emissions.

Thursday’s ruling stems back to a 2007 case in Utah when the Sierra Club sued EPA because they granted an operating permit to a new coal-fired power plant without taking the new plant’s carbon dioxide emissions into account.

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A team of eight scientists and conservationists with the Endangered Species Coalition have determined the top 10 species in the United States that deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act.

The animals and plants that were considered for the list, titled “Without a Net,” were nominated by various organizations across the country. The coalition prepared the list because they believe that the US Fish and Wildlife Services do not sufficiently research and list species in need of new protection.

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The latest in a flurry of environmentally-devastating, last-minute rule changes from the Bush administration will give the go ahead for coal mining companies to fill valleys with the mining debris left over from lobbing-off mountaintops.

Earlier this week, the EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality approved a rule change that will allow coal mining companies to lawfully bury stream valleys and fill them with the tops of mountains that have been carved off for the coal they contain.

For years, coal mining companies were allowed to file for exemptions to a 25 year-old rule prohibiting the dumping of fill from mountaintop removal mining within 100 feet of streams and were granted them the vast majority of the time. In practice, the government had essentially been ignoring the rule for years; now they have codified that ignorance into a regulatory standard.

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EPA officials have been working on a fast track to meet a Saturday deadline for a new rule that would weaken pollution regulations for power plants, allowing them to increase emissions without adding new controls, according to reports.

In essence, the Bush administration’s proposal would open a loophole and allow power plants to upgrade without installing costly new air pollution equipment.

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In a statement released by Dingell’s office, the GAO report was said to have found “shortcomings in the measures used by the Environmental Protection Agency to report the effectiveness of its civil and criminal enforcement programs to Congress and the public.”

The report says the EPA overstated it enforcement of environmental violations by including fines that may never be paid when tallying its penalties.

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Federal wildlife agencies have been told not to analyze the effects of emissions on species or habitats. This means that if you have a power-plant near a habitat, the agencies aren’t supposed to look into its emissions in relation to global warming effects on the local species…even if the power plant is the only thing in the area, and even if the species are part of the Endangered Species Act.

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The Supreme Court today began hearing a case that questions who (or what creatures) get dibs on the ocean waters off the coast of California, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

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Thank you getthebigpicture.net. Video source: MBelinkie on YouTube

Via: Seattle PI

Image:  Treehugger

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Here’s where it gets real juicy! Like something straight out of a Kid Rock video, the allegations include drug use, sexual relations between federal employees and oil company employees, rigging oil contracts, working part-time as oil consultants, and accepting gifts like golf and ski trips. Somewhat amusingly, Devaney had this to say of the Minerals Management Service (MMS):

“Sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms-length.”

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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