Groups Use Endangered Species Act for Global Warming Politics

Kassie Siegel, climate director for the Center for Biological Diversity

Conservation groups returned to court to challenge Bush administration efforts to help save the polar bear, saying federal officials' refusal to include steps against global warming violates the Endangered Species Act. —Dan Joling

Oh boy did I call it! I warned that the Bush Administration’s Interior Department move to put the Polar bear on the Endangered Species List was caving in to special interests who were attempting to use the endangered species act as back door way of imposing global warming regulations on the United States.

That’s right the polar bear population is actually increasing and has in fact doubled since the late 1960’s from 12,000 bears to 25,000.

Those are the facts but because some discredited global warming computer models projected that someday maybe 50 years out the bear could possibly be in danger the Interior Department has caved to it’s trial lawyer friends who hope to use this new protection as a way to impose global warming laws on the United States by the Endangered Species Act.—Alaphiah

Well the special interests have come forward in plain sight to verify my contention. The Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council have filed Court documents demanding that the Interior Department include steps against global warming. Their argument is, in making the Polar bear an endangered species, as the government did, not to force the reduction of carbon emissions to protect the bears would violate the Endangered Species Act.

So the let’s see the Interior Department added the Polar bear to the endangered species list because they would not stand up to special interests’ outlandish law suit and now the special interest wants to use the Endangered Species Act to fight global warming.

I’d say the Bush administration just showed us another example of the “false comfort of appeasement” by putting the Polar bear on the Endanger Species List in the first place.

It seems, if I can borrow President Bush’s words, that some in the Interior Department believed that they could negotiate with environmentalist, Greenpeace terrorist and radicals, as if some ingenious acquiescence would persuade these radicals or even satisfy them.

As Special Interest filed their law suit to force the Bush Administration to add the Polar bear to the endangered species act Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne probably declared, ‘Lord if only I could compromise with them just maybe this can all be avoided.’

Well apparently not and its about time Secretary Kempthorne we call this what it is—the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history and every time the Bush administration caves in to or attempts to work with Liberals or Democrats.