The Associated Press reported last week that the Commerce Department’s inspector general is looking into who leaked a draft of the Bush Administration’s plans to prevent federal agencies from considering the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on species protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, expressing concern over what he termed “a serious abdication of duty” by the government official or officials who leaked the document to the National Wildlife Federation last summer, called for the investigation. The draft changes to ESA regulations surfaced in August 2008, revealing the outgoing administration’s efforts to weaken the Act’s Section 7 consultation process by allowing agencies to ignore impacts to endangered species “manifested through global processes,” a clear reference to climate change.
The Department of Interior finalized the regulatory revisions just in time for them to go into effect before the new administration took office – ignoring overwhelming public comments against the changes. In one of its first major environmental decisions, the Obama Administration last week put the new regulations on hold and signaled its intention to modify or eliminate them.
Though Senator Inhofe characterized his hunt for the official who leaked the draft ESA regulations in terms of protecting the governmental integrity, he was apparently never troubled by leaks and a variety of questionable actions by the Bush Administration in connection with the nation’s most important biodiversity conservation statute. For example, the Senator did not call for an inquiry into why the Department of Interior modified ESA consultation rules that had been in place for more than two decades without the support of the Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) – the agency primarily responsible for implementing the ESA. The Senator was also noticeably silent when the Interior Department inspector general issued two reports detailing former Deputy Interior Secretary Julie McDonald’s repeated efforts to bully FWS scientists, quash listing decisions and critical habitat designations, and leak confidential documents to industry officials. Senator Inhofe is a staunch supporter of the Bush regulations’ effort to place consideration of climate change off limits under the ESA – despite overwhelming scientific evidence that changes triggered by a warming climate have already altered many ecosystems and now loom as a major threat to imperiled species around the globe. The Bush ESA regulations’ head-in-the-sand position regarding climate change aligns with Inhofe’s well-known skepticism about global warming, a position he reiterated in a January speech on the Senate floor that concluded with a warning that leaders are ignoring “new science” showing that “we are in a cooling period.” Inhofe remains one of the major obstacles in the Senate to comprehensive climate change legislation.
Talk about a serious abdication of duty...
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Dan Rohlf | March 16, 2009
The Associated Press reported last week that the Commerce Department’s inspector general is looking into who leaked a draft of the Bush Administration’s plans to prevent federal agencies from considering the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on species protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, expressing concern over what he termed […]
Matt Shudtz | March 13, 2009
Last week’s Supreme Court decision in Wyeth v. Levine protected consumers’ longstanding right to take pharmaceutical companies to court for failing to properly warn patients and their doctors about the risks posed by the drugs they market. Unfortunately, people injured by faulty medical devices don’t have the same right following last year’s Riegel v. Medtronic […]
Shana Campbell Jones | March 12, 2009
The truth hurts. Some of us accept the truth; some of us ignore it. All too often, industry-sponsored scientists take another approach to the truth: attack. A recent spat over a study finding that perchlorate blocks iodine in breast milk is an object lesson in what CPR Member Scholar Tom McGarity calls “attack science.” […]
Matt Shudtz | March 11, 2009
Monday was a good day for our nation’s science policy. At the same time he announced that the federal government will abandon misguided restrictions on stem cell research, President Obama unveiled an effort to promote a sea change in the way political appointees will treat the science that informs so many federal policies. In […]
William Buzbee | March 10, 2009
On March 3rd, the Supreme Court issued its much awaited decision in Summers v. Earth Island Institute. This was the latest in a series of cases dating to the early 1990s where the central question has concerned citizen standing: will the courts allow a citizen to stand before a court to argue that government or […]
Robert L. Glicksman | March 10, 2009
(CPR Member Scholar Robert L. Glicksman replies below to CPR Member Scholar William Buzbee’s post on the Summers vs. Earth Island Institute decision.) The decision in Summers represents the latest salvo in a continuing battle between those Supreme Court Justices who view the function of standing doctrine as ensuring that litigation before the federal […]
Matthew Freeman | March 9, 2009
CPR Member Scholar Thomas McGarity had op-eds over the weekend in three Texas newspapers — the Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle and Austin American-Statesman. His topic is Wyeth vs. Levine, last week’s blockbuster case from the Supreme Court, in which the Court rejected the Bush Administration’s multi-year effort to use the federal regulatory process as […]
Yee Huang | March 9, 2009
In the decade between 1994 and 2004, the bottled water industry enjoyed a meteoric rise as consumers flocked to their product, paying more per gallon than gasoline and neglecting a virtually free source of water – the tap. Bottled water drinkers formed fierce allegiances to their favorite brands, elevating bottled water beyond a beverage […]
Rena Steinzor | March 6, 2009
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is the most maligned and least respected federal agency with responsibility for protecting people’s lives. Now that Hilda Solis has been confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Labor, we can only hope that a new OSHA administrator with a strong stomach, an iron will, and a “yes […]