Like the announcement yesterday that the US had declared the polar bear a species in imminent danger of extinction. Yippee, it’s “Save the Bears Day!” Not.
What was I thinking? This is the Bush regime, the same pack of bait and switch clowns the world has had to endure for seven and a half years already. Surely if we’ve learned anything it’s that, when these creatures say anything, you can bet they mean something else altogether.
Yes, Washington has declared the polar bear in imminent danger of extinction. But the Bushies have also effectively said “so what?” The Independent sums it all up very nicely:
“Yesterday marked the first time the US Endangered Species Act was used to protect a species threatened by climate change. The US Geological Survey says that two-thirds of the world’s polar bears could be gone by 2050.
The bears will only be protected from the direct effects of hunting, and some other activities, because of limits imposed by the Interior Department. It invoked a seldom used loophole to make it easier for the energy industry to actually expand activities that already threaten the bears and their habitat.
The Interior Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, who spent much of his political life opposing the Endangered Species Act, said it would be “inappropriate” to use the polar bear listing “to regulate global climate change.”
American scientists believe that sea ice loss will likely result in two-thirds of the polar bears disappearing by mid-century.
The plight of the polar bear has also caused vehement disagreement within the Bush administration and last month the conservative Canadian government refused to list the polar bear as endangered. Canada has some 15,500 polar bears and it has given the polar bear its weakest classification, that of “special concern”, saying the animals were in trouble but not at risk of extinction.
President Bush is publicly committed to the rapid expansion of oil and gas exploration along the Alaskan coast, even at the cost of the polar bears’ habitat and opposes any moves to combat global warming through regulation.
But faced with overwhelming scientific evidence that already rapid loss of sea ice is accelerating, Mr Kempthorne said and he no choice but to declare the species threatened. “Sea ice is vital to polar bears’ survival,” he said. “This has been a difficult decision. But in light of the scientific record, and the restraints of the inflexible law that guides me,” he had made “the only decision I can make.”
So, kids, what’s the lesson from all this? It’s that these right-wing governments will follow the law when it’s “the only decision [they] can make” but then they’ll do everything in their power to make sure their decision is virtually meaningless.
The North American Oil Lobby, also known as Bush/Cheney/Harper, know that, so long as they’re at the wheel, Big Oil rules baby!
The Mound of Sound 