Bush ready to gut Endangered Species Act.

One more trophy on the mantle for the Worst President Everâ„¢.

Is that too political of a statement? Apology in advance, but he is leaving quite a legacy. But not a good one.

 

Yes, because why not dismantle an Act with a 99% efficacy rate?

I just read the links and the intended changes seem to be driven by cost increases due to the impositions of the ESA. So once again, we have short sighted gain for long term consequence.

 

JAN can't come soon enough. What a w@nker.

 

My father's birthday is Jan 20 (he will be 87). He has already mentioned numerous times that he will be getting a new president for his birthday.

 

Is this full circle? CARB was sued by the federal government for setting local emission/environmental standards (EV1 story)....and now the logic is that the federal government should let local standards prevail?

 

I get the feeling that this is something he's wanted to do along, but he was just distracted by the "need" to wage a bogus war. Remember that debate in 2004 where he smirked and said that he was a good steward of the environment.

 

Because we wouldn't want to regulate global warming gasses ... no sir. Global warming is a myth, don't you know.

... Brad (still ashamed of our "leadership")

 

It is an interesting situation...

While I advocate for habitat preservation, with the polar bear situation / "global warming" it is a situation that, for every federal permit that might allow directly or indirectly for increased emissions of hydrocarbons, it could be considered an act that might impact the polar bear, and thus could be prevented.

I'm all for polar bears, but that seems like a recipe for very poor public policy decisions.

 

not the polar bears, without polar bears we wouldn't be able to have those great Coke commercials at Christmas.

 

So, because there is a possibility that GW considerations might slow down or kill some projects, the Bush administration will just eliminate all oversight by parties outside the project? What a clever solution by a clever administration.

 

Remember, regulation is bad for the people. The private sector knows best.

 

Yes, that worked so well for the California Electrical Power industry and the Mortgage industry. Let's extend it to Environmental Protection.

 

UMMMMMMM Polar Bear burgers!
What is weird is that people think, and it seems to have been accepted as fact, that the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts and other environmental laws prevent human caused impact or disturbance to the environment.

While certain chemicals are certainly regulated, in general any project can affect and even wipe out any portion of almost any natural habitat. The only thing the environmental laws actually say is that you have to do a study to determine the impacts of the project. That is why the studies are always attacked, not specifically the projects.

Any whoo most environmental laws are just used by no-growthers to stop development in their back yards.

Unfortunately this makes it more difficult for the legitimate use of the laws to prevent true harm to the environment because the no-growthers usually piss off average Joe's who otherwise wouldn't care much.

 

You're Karl Rove aren't you? :evil:

 

I know it was stated somewhat tongue in cheek, but there needs to be a balance. The private sector has proven quite efficient in many areas when there is adequate incentive to do so. The public sector is painfully inefficient and ineffective, though when it devises appropriate incentives for the private sector, can achieve desired objectives.

But just be careful how regulation is accomplished. As per my prior example, if any project that produces incremental CO2 can be shut down because it "threatens" polar bears due to "global warming", that is a pretty draconian public policy. Taken to its ultimate conclusion, you couldn't build a road, put up a building, or for that matter, cut a fart without violating the law.

 

Taken to it ultimate conclusion, could we still breathe?

 

OK - if you want to take that cynical of a line...

The public sector typically only masquerades as protectors of the public interest. It is really more protecting their jobs, strengthening their unions, and promoting special interests.

If you don't think so, look at the SEI website. So they agitate for public employee unionization to increase membership so they can garnish wages (whether you want to belong to the union or not) so they can increase their budget so can further expand unionization efforts and further garnish wages to create even larger budgets to buy political favors via political action committees and fealty from their ever-expanding membership come election day.