Bush's Parting Shots at the Environment Are
Major
By Amanda Paulson, Christian Science
Monitor
Posted on November 12, 2008, Printed on November 12,
2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/106444/
The changes seem minor: clarifications of regulations, revisions to rules,
updated land-management proposals.
But some recent proposals from the Interior Department - many likely to be
finalized in the waning months of the Bush administration and pushed through
with a shortened comment period - are seen by critics as an assault on America's
environmental resources and an attempt to solidify industry-friendly policy.
The proposals include changes to the Endangered Species Act, new management
plans for 11 million acres in Utah, an effort to revoke congressional
committees' emergency powers to protect public lands, and a rule change for
mountaintop mining regulations.
The Interior Department says the changes are common-sense ones that balance
the needs of conservation with those of national energy policy.
Environmentalists counter that the actions represent the final efforts of an
administration that has been hostile to the environment since Day 1.
"Overall, it certainly is consistent with the approach this administration
has taken for the past eight years," says Sharon Buccino, director of the
Natural Resources Defense Council's land program. "It's one final push before
they go out the door to really open up public resources for private and industry
gain."
Mr. Bush is not the first lame-duck president to change environmental rules.
Bill Clinton, in the last few days of his presidency, pushed through regulations
to protect vast areas of the West.
The proposals include the following:
- A change to the Endangered Species Act to disallow the ESA from being used
to regulate global climate change even if a species, like the polar bear, is
suffering as a result of it. The change also reduces the number of scientific
reviews of projects performed by the US Fish & Wildlife Service.
- Six new resource management plans for 11 million acres of federal land in
Utah that critics say would open more roads and trails, make nearly 9 million
acres available for oil and gas development, and reduce the areas managed
primarily for environmental value. Five of the plans were finished on Friday.
- A rule change eliminating one of the few regulations governing mountaintop
mining, a common practice in Appalachia in which a mountain's top is blown off
to get access to the rich coal beds beneath. Currently, a largely ignored
"buffer zone" rule bars mining companies from dumping debris within 100 feet
of any stream. The new rule would require them to either avoid the buffer zone
or show why that is not possible, and to minimize harming the streams "to the
extent possible" if they must dump there.
- A proposal to remove an "emergency powers" provision that allows the
Interior Department or two congressional committees to protect public lands.
The rule gained prominence this summer when the House Natural Resources
Committee declared 1 million acres next to the Grand Canyon off limits to
uranium mining.
These proposals have been portrayed incorrectly, says Chris Paolino, a
spokesman for the Interior Department.
The proposed changes to the ESA, Mr. Paolino says, would clarify the Interior
secretary's belief that the ESA is not the right mechanism for regulating
climate change. "Science at this point cannot make the link between the specific
greenhouse-gas emissions from, say, Kansas, and link it to the effect on a
subset of polar bears or an individual polar bear in the Arctic region," he
says. As for the reduced number of federal scientific reviews of projects, he
believes it will allow the Fish & Wildlife scientists to give more time to
projects that are more likely to affect listed species.
Environmental groups counter that allowing different agencies to determine
whether a project needs independent scientific review hasn't worked in the past
and could lead to a scattershot approach in which potential hazards to species
are overlooked. "They won't have good sense of the cumulative impacts if they're
not tracking projects across species and agencies," says Noah Greenwald, science
director for the Center for Biodiversity in Tucson, Ariz.
As for the ESA's role in climate change, Mr. Greenwald argues that it
provides a focus for assessing the impact of greenhouse-gas emissions. He notes
that even in the past, when the ESA was used to regulate DDT because of its
impact on the bald eagle, officials did not tie one use of DDT to the death of
one particular eagle.
Some of the harshest criticism is reserved for the land-management proposals
in Utah and the easing of restrictions on drilling and oil-shale exploration, in
part because they would be difficult for a future administration to
overturn.
"Defaulting to providing more and more routes for oil and gas and more land
for oil and gas development effectively prohibits other uses of these lands,"
says Nada Culver, senior counsel for The Wilderness Society. Encouraging
oil-shale development and geothermal leasing, and creating new "energy
corridors" in the West, could lead to an "industrialization of the landscape,"
she adds.
The Bureau of Land Management, for its part, says most of the lands were
already open to potential drilling and off-road vehicles. The new plans would
get rid of some of the unrestricted vehicle use, they say, and put designated
routes in play. "There seems to be a perception ... that these plans would throw
open vast new acreage to development and use," says Don Ogaard, planning lead
for Utah's BLM. "The land is open to that use now."
Amanda Paulson is a staff writer for The Christian Science Monitor.
© 2008 Christian Science Monitor All rights
reserved.
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