Cleaning Up

These are followups to earlier posts.
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The words are there, but it doesn't look like the Obama White House gave GOPervs a win in the fight for controlling appointments to Texas judgeships, detailed in an earlier post here. The article in the Dallas Morning News is titled; GOP senators rule day on judges. The information is that the formerly secret committee that TX Senators Cornyn and Hutchison used for screening applicants has new Democratic members and the WH will accept nominees from TX Dems as well.

Texas' Republican senators refused to cede control of judicial nominations, and now the Democratic White House seems to have struck a deal in their favor: The senators will continue screening applicants, though Texas Democrats will get input.

"We have an understanding with the Obama administration," Sen. John Cornyn said Thursday. "We've worked out a pretty good arrangement."

The dozen Texas Democrats in Congress had insisted on full control of sending the names of possible nominees to the White House. They apparently lost the argument.

On Thursday, the senators – both Republicans – issued an invitation for lawyers to apply for the U.S. attorney openings in Dallas and Houston.

Aides said the invitation was issued with at least tacit approval from the White House, and the Democrats' point man in the feud, Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Austin, offered no direct objection.

While President Obama has gotten a lot of flack about being too bipartisan, his approach seems to head off trouble from the blatantly anti-public service wingers. It appears to me that he has given himself room for making reasonable choices while giving the mudwrestling wingers he has to work with wriggle room in their favorite arena, the media.

The News calls a victory, but has to give the details which don't support its view. And while it would be nice to have the satisfaction of blowing off the dirtballs, having to work with them would make that a truly pyrrhic victory.

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In another wrap to a story told in the cab earlier, trading in illegally trapped turtles and other reptiles has been shut down by a sting operation.

The smugglers moved their goods across borders using secret compartments, a Maryland meat processing plant and the help of a corrupt Louisiana turtle farm. Their lucrative product: rattlesnakes, snapping turtles and salamanders.

This was the portrait of a trade in illegal reptiles and amphibians that New York State environmental authorities painted on Thursday, when a two-year undercover investigation called Operation Shellshock ended with criminal charges against 17 people. More charges were filed by officials in other states and Canada, the New York officials said.

The case had the familiar ring of a drug bust, but it was instead built in the unlikely world of herpetological shows and included charges against leaders at organizations like the New York Turtle and Tortoise Society, the Long Island Herpetological Society, and the pet Web site turtlesale.com, a Florida-based company that is also facing New York charges.

“Our investigators began this operation with a simple question: Is there a commercial threat to our critical wildlife species?” Pete Grannis, the commissioner of the State Department of Environmental Conservation, which conducted the investigation, said in a statement.

What they found alarmed them. “A very lucrative illegal market for these creatures does exist, fostered by a strong, clandestine culture of people who want to exploit wildlife for illegal profit,” Mr. Grannis said.

Turtles taken from the Trinity are not safe for use, as reported earlier, and their suspected export abroad - or use here at home - has been ended. The threat to anyone's health from unconventional food sources is just not worth the savings.

My little garden, and possible pond, grows ever more attractive.

Protection For Our World

One of the arrogant criminal acts of the formerly occupied White House was removal on consideration for other species when the U.S. wanted to occupy a space of its choice. We had as a nation showed wisdom and a caring policy when it came to our use of resources, prior to the war criminal cabal.

President Obama has returned this country to that behavior, and it is a shining moment for us as a country.

Today President Obama will restore rules requiring U.S. agencies consult with independent federal experts to determine if their actions might harm threatened and endangered species, according to an administration official who asked not to be identified, marking yet another reversal of President Bush's environmental legacy.

In December 2008, the Bush administration changed a longstanding practice under the Endangered Species Act by issuing rules that allowed agencies to move ahead with projects and programs without seeking an independent review by either the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Environmentalists and scientists said this shift could allow agencies to press ahead with plans that could hurt already-vulnerable species across the country.

Today Obama will issue a presidential memorandum, an administration official said, that will direct departments to yet again consult with the two agencies on decisions that could affect imperiled plants and animals "while the Interior and Commerce Departments review the Bush rulemaking."

The move, the official said, "will restore the status quo ante and allow the Interior and Commerce Departments to determine whether a new rule should be promulgated that will again codify the longstanding consultation practice under the" Endangered Species Act.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall (D-W.V.), who had decried the Bush rule and had been trying to reverse it through the legislative process, hailed Obama's decision.

"I wholeheartedly support the president's proposal to restore the protections for endangered species that the Bush administration spent so many years trying to undermine," Rahall said in an interview. "It is one more indication that the new administration truly represents change for the better and is committed to the protection of our natural resources and our environment. I think we know who would have been the winner in this fox guarding the hen house scenario advanced by the Bush administration, and it would not be the hens."

The President just visited the Interior Department, congratulating the department on its work and commemorating its founding 160 years ago. With the return of care for our fellow creatures, he made this a glorious occasion.

Of course, there are the neanderthals who think shooting wolves from helicopters is sport, and this sort will try to head off any return of reason or enlightenment. There is a sort of subhuman attitude that gets its kicks from the rape of the natural world.

Democrats in Congress are attempting to reverse the rule via legislation. House Democrats wrote a provision into a spending bill that passed last month, leading Republicans to cry foul.

"This is a backdoor maneuver to create vast new climate change powers without any public comment or involvement of the American people," said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Washington, ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee.

The Senate has yet to act on the issue.

Since taking office six weeks ago, Obama has directed his Cabinet to reverse or review four Bush-era environmental and energy rules. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has shelved drilling plans off the East and West coasts, as well as on federal land in Utah. He also shelved a plan to open up areas to oil-shale development. Those plans will be reviewed, he said.

And Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, last month agreed to review whether it should regulate carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, portending a major reversal of the Bush administration's policy on global warming.

As some one who had the privilege of working with Senator Ralph Yarborough on the first legislation to give federal protection to endangered species, I take great pleasure in having the respect for our fellow creatures returned to this country. It will be a real improvement in our relationship with the world, and with other countries.

This is a moment of great improvement for our country in its place in civilization.

Yes, They Could

Contrary to Republican beliefs, the cost of a unionized labor force was not the primary cause for the trouble the Big Three automakers find themselves in. The executives made some incredible stupid decisions when it came to product lines. The sad part is that they didn't have to, and they didn't when it came to other markets. During my weekly visit to Watching America, I found an intriguing article about General Motor's success in Brazil. It was published December 5, 2008 in that nation's Gazeta Mercantil and shows how the company gauged the market correctly.

...GM is doing badly in the U.S., but not in other countries like Brazil. The parent corporation may not have modernized itself sufficiently to keep up with the evolving demands of the U.S. market, and it may even have to shoulder great burdens due to its pension fund. Nonetheless, GM here in Brazil is faring well among the other three giants, Fiat, Volkswagen and Ford. According to the latest numbers, GM sold 444,000 automobiles in Brazil from January to November. This is a 10.4% increase from the same time period last year. In the light commercial segment, which saw 76,000 units sold, there was an impressive growth of 60% again in the same period. Here, Chevrolet continues to be a respectful brand. Also, like other assembly plants installed in Brazil, flex cars already dominate a substantial part of production at GM.

"Flex cars" are those vehicles designed to run on ethanol, alcohol, or both. Brazil determined years ago to be more energy independent and developed its own version of ethanol, one that is based on sugar beets rather than corn. All they needed to take advantage of that new energy source were vehicles designed to run on that fuel. GM stepped up with the right technology and found a solid and burgeoning market. It showed the kind of nimbleness that it hasn't seen fit to use in the United States where it offered instead the Tahoe and Suburban behemoths.

Now, ethanol is certainly not the ideal solution, especially since Brazil is bulldozing rain forests to make room for more beet fields, but it has proven to be a pretty good transitional alternative to petroleum. GM tells us it has an electric car in the works, but it's several years from introduction and it will be priced out of the range of most car buyers. That is not helpful.

If GM, Ford, and Chrysler really want to make it, they're going to have to show the foresight and the commitment that their foreign divisions have shown. If they don't do some serious and quick retooling, they will deserve to go the way of those other behemoths.

A'Hunting She Will Go

Vice Presidential aspirant Palin is following in her predecessor Cheney's all-fours by stalking whales. A designation of the belugas as endangered is under attack from the moose hunter.

The federal government on Friday placed beluga whales that live in Cook Inlet in Alaska on the endangered species list, rejecting efforts by Gov. Sarah Palin and others against increased protection.

The relatively small, whitish whales, sometimes visible from downtown Anchorage, declined by almost 50 percent in the late 1990s, and federal scientists say they have not rebounded despite a series of protections, including a halt to subsistence hunting by Alaska Natives. About 375 whales have been counted in Cook Inlet each of the last two years, according to scientists with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

“In spite of protections already in place, Cook Inlet beluga whales are not recovering,” James W. Balsiger, the acting assistant administrator for the fisheries agency, said in a written statement. The whales are in danger of extinction, Dr. Balsiger said.

The announcement, made on a predetermined schedule under the Endangered Species Act, drew further attention to Ms. Palin’s positions on environmental issues. The governor, the Republican nominee for vice president, has come under scrutiny for her ambiguous statements about climate change and her administration’s failed effort earlier this year to prevent another species, the polar bear, from being listed as threatened. The state is suing the federal government over the polar bear listing.

As with the polar bear, Ms. Palin’s administration opposed the beluga listing in part because of its potential to restrict coastal and offshore oil and gas development. The beluga listing could also affect other projects, including the expansion of the Port of Anchorage and a proposed bridge over Knik Arm that would connect Anchorage to the Matanuska-Susitna Valley and Ms. Palin’s hometown, Wasilla.

“I am especially concerned,” the governor said in a written statement in August 2007, when her administration submitted documents to fight the listing, “that an unnecessary federal listing and designation of critical habitat would do serious long-term damage to the vibrant economy of the Cook Inlet area.”

All the vibrant economy that the right has spent eight years serving welfare just isn't needing plowing under the belugas nearly so much as it needs a viable economy to serve, but that hasn't made its way into winger psychology.

Anything that improves the planet threatens this recidivist element, and until they are out of power there is no part of our world that is safe. It's as warm in the Arctic as last year, and the ice keeps receding.

Temperatures in the Arctic last fall hit an all-time high -- more than 9 degrees above normal -- and remain almost as high this year, an international team of scientists reported Thursday.
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"The year 2007 was the warmest year on record in the Arctic," said Jackie Richter-Menge, a climate expert at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H., and editor of the latest annual Arctic Report Card.

"These are dynamic and dramatic times in the Arctic," she said. "The outlook isn't good."

The election can't come soon enough for belugas or the Arctic ice. Like the economy, worldwide preservation efforts will have to be brought back from a very thin edge. Hopefully, it will be possible.

A Source of Pride

Hello from Padre Island National Seashore. If you have a chance to walk on a pristine beach at sunrise, I recommend this one. There is a National Park Service visitors' center with information programs, and next week there will be a release of Kemp Ridley sea turtles which have produced so far at leat 148 nests, a growth that is bringing back from near extinction this distinctive species.

In the earlier days of conservation, Senator Ralph Yarborough introduced legislation to make the Padre Island area a National Seashore, and met with a great deal of opposition on the grounds that it would take a great source of revenue, hunting and fishing grounds and oil development, away from the state of Texas. His battles went on until 1962 when he was able to push the legislation through while some of the main opponents were away.

Of course, the stories about his battles are part of the usual Texas myths, but having been offered a small park which would be named after him, my much admired Senator refused and pushed on for as much territory he could save for public enjoyment as possible.

This morning at sunrise I was all alone on the beach - except for the gulls, the pelicans, the piping plovers, the stilts, the oyster-catchers, the coyote, the ghost crabs, the Portugese Men O' War and a great blue heron among some of the species I can recognize.

When I went to work for him, el Senador had gone through the hardest part of getting the original bill passed and signed into law by President John F. Kennedy. I had the privilege of working for the funding to develop the park in the legislative offices in that wonderful Old SOB (Senate Office Buidling, of course).

Next week the Kemp Ridley sea turtle I adopted for the friend whose place on the beach I'm visiting now will be released. She will pick a name for it and keep me posted on whether it returns or not, or what progress may be reported for it.

I so hope that such a spirit of public service can occur again and that I can help elect some one with the stature of a Senator Yarborough. I'll be working in a campaign to return this kind of achievement to one congressional seat, trying to elect Dr. Glenn Melancon to represent, in the real sense of the word, the 4th District of Texas.

More Kemp Ridley sea turtles. All of us need this seat in Congress to return to honest dedicated representatives, just as we all need Barack Obama to begin returning this country's functional government and pulling us out of the pit we've been pushed into.

I recommend a long walk on the sand in the early morning on Padre Island to know what that means.

Despoiling the Earth

The attack on America launched by oil interests centers on ANWR. As Sen. Bryon Dorgan has pointed out this morning on CSpan, there isn't a real reason for this being the target. Oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico are larger.

Incidentally, world shipping patterns are such that the oil that might be produced out of ANWR, like the present Alaska oil, would be headed to Russia. Talking about how the U.S. would have more oil out of ruining ANWR is purely false.

There is something about violating laws that really turns on the right wing.

In late January, Jim Sims, the president and CEO of the Western Business Roundtable, an industry trade group that represents mining and energy interests, told his colleagues to prepare for the worst: The polar bear was almost certain to receive "threatened" status under the Endangered Species Act. "The negative implications of this to business and industry [are] breathtaking," he wrote in an email, obtained by Mother Jones. But, he said, his and other groups had devised a plan to fight and "quite possibly reverse" the imminent ruling. Part of that strategy involved a legal challenge to the listing. On that score, Sims promised they had "secured a truly extraordinary plaintiff for this effort: one of America's most prominent civil rights leaders of the four past decades."

That prominent plaintiff was Roy Innis, the longtime chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality. A civil rights group that dates back to the 1940s, CORE's agenda has taken a distinct rightward tilt under Innis' leadership, aligning itself with conservative activists opposed to the environmental movement.
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Since 2005, when the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the polar bear as a threatened species, a broad coalition of industry and conservative groups have watched, with increasing dread, as the petition slowly worked its way through the Interior Department, helped along by lawsuits filed by environmental groups. Almost since the ink dried on the ESA more than thirty years ago, conservatives have bridled at its strictures, viewing the law as an affront to free-market principles and an impediment to businesses seeking to develop land or extract natural resources. But, even in this context, the polar bear's possible ESA listing has elevated the debate to a fever pitch. "Compared to this decision, the Spotted Owl and Snail Darter cases were pimples on an elephant," Chuck Cushman, the founder of the American Land Rights Association, told recipients of his email list this winter in an "all out call to action" that implored supporters to "deluge the White House and Interior Department with calls, faxes and emails." By this he meant that, unlike typical ESA listings, protections for the polar bear could extend well beyond its natural habitat in the US, along the Beaufort and Chukchi seas of northern and western Alaska. Based on scientific studies showing that global warming is rapidly deteriorating the Arctic sea ice that polar bears call home, the CBD's endangered species petition was among the first to tie greenhouse gas emissions to the fate of a species.

The ruination of our world could appeal to no reasonable person, but it does attract the wingers. Why species created by their Flying Spaghetti Monster should be such anathema to the despoilers is, I admit, a mystery to me.

We can listen to the Senate debate today, where the wingers will be trying to convince their listeners that we should stop the nonsense of saving our planet so that we can have more petroleum products. All the possibilities of harnessing wind, tidal, plant energy will be despised, in the effort to promote the despoilation.

These people have no shame. They are all about profits for oil, and we know who is paying their expenses.

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Would you like to sign the petition to keep w's Liebury from being located at SMU? Please go to http://www.protectsmu.org/ and sign! Thanks.

Where Have All The Species Gone?

There has been a diminution in species that we've known and read about for some time, maybe long enough that we think it's part of the order of things. As tomorrow is Earth Day, I'd like to point out that the cost of losing species is our own impoverishment, if not outright dangerous.

The beauty of the earth is a gift we need to stop and appreciate. Its variety keeps us and all of its other life forms in balance, and keeps us safe from extremes. We are threatening that variety and beauty.

If you've never been to Yellowstone, you're already taking a chance that it's not going to be there for you, because we weren't there for it.

"What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected. You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of our grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children that we have taught our children that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves." These are the words that Chief Seattle of the Suquamish tribe said in the 1850's. His speech that day is said to be one of the most beautiful and profound statements on the environments ever made. He made these statements when the US government wanted to buy his land and he knew they would destroy it and his way of life.
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Our intervention, our greed and disrespect for nature is taking its toll. The Earth can only take so much and it and everything else has its limits. One can only destroy so much timber, so much clean water, so much wildlife until, at some point; it will be unable to rejuvenate itself.
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Don't kid yourself by saying too bad but there are lots more left. Hundreds of species every year disappear forever from this Earth. You do have the choice to preserve them or to let them be forever gone.

In Europe, particularly in England where birdwatchers anxiously await the spring flocks of our friends with wings, the unspeakable is occurring. Migratory birds are disappearing.

To you readers who follow cabdrollery's Thursday Birdblogging, it will come as no surprise that I am always watching for my returning birds, and am particularly proud that my rampant underbrush has been home annually to a brown thrasher for some time now. It's no longer a source of conflict with the meticulous gardener next door, since she's converted to birdwatching, herself.

The distress we would feel if we never saw our cardinals, mourning doves, robins, cedar waxwings, Carolina wrens - none of us want to experience that, ever.

Many of the birds that migrate to Britain and Europe from Africa every spring, from the willow warbler to the cuckoo, are undergoing alarming declines, new research shows.

The falls in numbers are so sharp and widespread that ornithologists are waking up to a major new environmental problem – the possibility that the whole system of bird migration between Africa and Europe is running into trouble.
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The study, compiled by the RSPB research biologist Steven Ewing and likely to be published later this year, goes on to show that this pattern is not confined to Britain. It is being repeated across Europe as a whole, from Spain to Finland, with 27 out of 37 European-African migratory species for which there is reliable long-term population data – 72 per cent of the total – undergoing declines.

Our lives are not just poorer for the loss of beautiful creatures, and of other inhabitants of this earth. The fact that we depend on so many life forms for sustaining life, not just to eat, makes that loss hazardous to our health, as well.

We've objected, and sometimes combated, the abuse of our world in many ways, but until recently, we've been fighting against indifference, even an abusive mind-set. As the losses we've been subjected to are growing every day more a concern to rational people, the actual danger is becoming more clear. Global warming is showing its ugly face, and now starvation has become an acknowledged, discernible, result.

Concern for our environment isn't a luxury that elitists get emotional over at the expense of the economically deprived. Hunting Bambi isn't the problem. Our environment can't be damaged without hurting ourselves.

Earth Day dawns tomorrow full of the potential to work with or against the forces of nature. Our lives depend on our choices.

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These conservatives in training sure got the message right. If you truly dislike your fellow man and consider basic decency more politically correct dogma, you will want to play this game with the Young Conservatives of Texas.

If race-baiting makes you vomit, you may want to consider another diversion.

The Texas Tech community reacted to a student organization after it organized and conducted a game called "Catch the Illegal Immigrant" March 31, which involved a controversial T-shirt with words "Illegal Immigrant" written on the front and the words "Catch Me If You Can" bannered across the back.
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The game consisted of a handful of students, all Caucasian, who wore the T-shirts as they went to classes on campus, he said. If another student encountered one of the students donning the shirt, he or she could bring the "illegal immigrant" back to the Young Conservatives of Texas table outside of the Student Union Building, where he or she would be awarded a prize.

While the event occurred on Cesar Chavez Day, a day intended to celebrate the Mexican-American political activist and leader, Cullin said its organizers did not intentionally schedule it on that day. It was a coincidence.

There's a way to make your parents proud, if you happen to be descended from the kind of family that uses racial insults to amuse themselves, while they cheat the illeguls that do the gardening with less than minimum wage.

I am waiting for a world where nastiness to fellow beings earns sneers, not prizes. Maybe one of the prizes could be "Letter From The Birmingham Jail"? We can hope.

World Of Hurt

The existence of our world's whales again is threatened, in a direct way, by the occupied white House. The right whale's major breeding grounds is proposed for another lease for oil drilling. This atrocity is almost in a repeat of the action the opened vital polar bear habitat to oil leases while declaring the threatened status of the species.

The Bush administration wants to open 5.6 million acres in the Bering Sea off Alaska to oil and gas leasing, including an area north of the Aleutian Islands near Bristol Bay designated critical habitat for the North Pacific right whale. The proposal was published in Tuesday's Federal Register by the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS), as reported by the Center for Biological Diversity. North Pacific right whales once ranged from California to Alaska and across the North Pacific to Russia and Japan. They were decimated by commercial whaling and remain the most endangered large whale in the world. Fewer than 50 individuals remain in the Bering Sea population.

"Drilling in Bristol Bay would be drilling through the heart of the most important habitat of the most endangered whale on the planet," said Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity. “If the North Pacific right whale is to have any chance of survival, we must protect its critical habitat, not auction it off to oil companies." The CBD reports the leasing proposal was made the same day the National Marine Fisheries Service, another federal agency, published a final rule in the Federal Register naming portions of the lease area as critical habitat for the North Pacific right whale. Ooops.

The worst administration in history has no qualms about threatening the existence of a species to give more of our world over to its Big Oil lobby. Strangely, the whale oil that lit our homes before electricity made this whale species rare. In an attempt to keep the oil companies making their forays against the world, it is further endangered now by White House arrogant ignorance.

Another Unsurprise

President George W. Bush has put fewer plants and animals on the Endangered List in seven years than his father did in one year. His Interior Department found all sorts of canny ways to manage this negative accomplishment according to this article in today's Washington Post.

Controversies have occasionally flared over Interior Department officials who regularly overruled rank-and-file agency scientists' recommendations to list new species, but internal documents also suggest that pervasive bureaucratic obstacles were erected to limit the number of species protected under one of the nation's best-known environmental laws.

The documents show that personnel were barred from using information in agency files that might support new listings, and that senior officials repeatedly dismissed the views of scientific advisers as President Bush's appointees either rejected putting imperiled plants and animals on the list or sought to remove this federal protection.

Officials also changed the way species are evaluated under the 35-year-old law -- by considering only where they live now, as opposed to where they used to exist -- and put decisions on other species in limbo by blocking citizen petitions that create legal deadlines.

The excuse offered by the Interior Department? They've been too busy defending lawsuits against the department for failing to list new species. How's that for an Alice In Wonderland explanation.

The result has been the loss of several species, and the article listed a couple of them. Of course, there's no way to get an accurate count, nor to determine what those losses will lead to as the ecology is altered by those losses. But the argricorps and land developers are happy: they haven't had to deal with those pesky environmental issues under Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

The irony of one delisting will, of course, be lost on the administration which doesn't do nuance: that of the American Bald Eagle in Arizona's Sonoran Desert, even though there are only 50 breeding pairs instead of the desire goal of 500.

Heckuva job, Dirk.

303 days.

Polar Bears Holding On, Barely

Once a lease is allowed of land for the exploration for oil and gas, there is no going back. There is activity allowed that will not ever be undone. For that reason, the Department of the Interior will allow a rape of polar bear habitat in haste, before actual endangered species status can be given to the polar bear which would prevent its acting against public interests.

Typical of this occupied White House, the cronies appointed to high offices in our executive branch are scurrying around trying to pass the public wealth off to business interests and friends in defiance of the oath of office they take. Foreign and domestic enemies are being given rights to public possession, in this case our lands.

The Bush administration is weeks away from a decision that most likely will designate polar bears as a threatened species, but it said Thursday that it won't budge on issuing new oil and gas leases in their shrinking Alaskan habitat.

A House of Representatives committee on global warming called on the Interior Department to hold off auctioning oil and gas leases in northwest Alaska's Chuckchi Sea until the department decides whether to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service postponed the decision last week for at least another 30 days, and a ruling isn't expected before the Feb. 6 oil and gas lease sale by the Minerals Management Service.
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"We wouldn't be proceeding with this sale if we weren't comfortable that we had enough knowledge, enough data to say that we can adequately see that the polar bear is protected ... if the department makes a decision to list the polar bear," said Randall Luthi, the director of the Minerals Management Service. "I'm serious about seeing that we do this right, and I believe we are doing it right."

But officials acknowledge that climate change has led to the loss of vast expanses of polar sea ice, which the bears need.

"We need to be doing something about climate change starting yesterday," said Dale Hall, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. "There needs to be a serious effort to try to control greenhouse gases, which is probably the only thing we have control over."

Polar bears are considered marine mammals because they depend on sea ice for hunting seals, but they den on land. As sea ice has retreated, polar bears must swim farther and expend more energy to reach it.

A U.S. Geological Survey study issued this summer found that in the next 50 years, shrinking sea ice will leave only a small population of polar bears in the islands of the Canadian Arctic. Two-thirds of the world's polar bears, including those along the coasts of Alaska and Russia, are projected to disappear. One-fifth of the estimated 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears in the world live on the coast of Alaska's Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

Once the drilling is allowed, the habitat is forever damaged, of course, and the tools of the war criminals are well aware that the environment will never be repaired. That makes it mandatory to accomplish the crime now, while they have control of the department which when properly staffed is supposed to protect public interests.

Meanwhile, the loss of ice in the polar regions has been proceeding more rapidly than predictions had shown it would have.

"In both cases, east and west, what concerns us is that we don't have a good understanding of what we call the basal processes — what's happening at the base of the ice sheet, the interface of the ice and the land or ocean beneath. And what we don't capture well in our climate models could lead to more rapid loss of ice than we've been predicting till now."
(snip)
The British research published last week estimated a loss of 132 billion tonnes of ice in 2006 from West Antarctica, up from 83 billion tonnes in 1996, and a loss of about 60 billion tonnes in 2006 from the Antarctic Peninsula.

Antarctica's ice, they concluded, is much more complex than scientists had previously appreciated. And while they are primarily preoccupied with understanding the changes apparent now in the west, they signal that the stability of the eastern icescape unfolding beneath our aircraft may not be as it seems. "Thinning of its potentially vulnerable marine sectors suggests this may change in the near future," the report concludes.

If the enemies of our environment can put measures in place now, while they hold the reins of power, the damage they do can potentially forever keep responsible protections from repairing the ravages they are instituting.

The offices of our representatives are holding on tightly to what powers they have kept, to keep our world from total destruction. Turning off the lights is not enough for us as individuals. We need to put more Dems in seats in Congress, while we have a world left.

Not Your Father's Line of Descent

This is very comforting. We don't have to be the same species of the war criminal variety, I am postulating from finding that fossil evidence shows the lines might not be so straight after all. I am comforted to think that my branch is the one with feelings for my fellow man, the one with ideals of making the world better for those to follow after me. I don't have to be just another grasping snarling life form motivated by greed.

Surprising research based on two African fossils suggests our family tree is more like a wayward bush with stubby branches, challenging what had been common thinking on how early humans evolved.

The discovery by Meave Leakey, a member of a famous family of paleontologists, shows that two species of early human ancestors lived at the same time in Kenya. That pokes holes in the chief theory of man's early evolution — that one of those species evolved from the other.

And it further discredits that iconic illustration of human evolution that begins with a knuckle-dragging ape and ends with a briefcase-carrying man.

The old theory is that the first and oldest species in our family tree, Homo habilis, evolved into Homo erectus, which then became human, Homo sapiens. But Leakey's find suggests those two earlier species lived side-by-side about 1.5 million years ago in parts of Kenya for at least half a million years. She and her research colleagues report the discovery in a paper published in Thursday's journal Nature.

The paper is based on fossilized bones found in 2000. The complete skull of Homo erectus was found within walking distance of an upper jaw of Homo habilis, and both dated from the same general time period. That makes it unlikely that Homo erectus evolved from Homo habilis, researchers said.

I can take a great deal of hope from these findings. A lack of moral sense and of a feeling of compassion does not have to be part of my heritage. I am homo/femina of quite another sort than horribilis. Now can I have a separate world where we can all work toward a living condition that works for everyone? Without the pitchforks?

Newly Discovered Hummingbird

This photo is a new species of hummingbird that has been discovered in Colombia. It's beautiful, and exciting, and also greatly threatened by the main crop there, coca, for which forests are destroyed. It is going to take preserving its decreasing habitat if this beautiful treasure is going to stay with us.

(The photo is from AP, via Yahoo news, and illustrates the article below.)

The Gorgeted Puffleg, a rare hummingbird that boasts a plumage of violet blue and iridescent green on its throat, has been discovered living in the cloud forests of southwestern Colombia, researchers announced.

The species belongs to the Puffleg genus, which appear to have "little cotton balls above their legs," said Luis Mazariegos-Hurtado, who has spent 30 years documenting hummingbirds and founded the Colombian Hummingbird Conservancy.

The species — known by its scientific name Eriocnemis isabellae — was confirmed by two of the world's leading specialists on the puffleg, Karl L. Schuchmann, curator of ornithology at Zoological Research Museum A. Koenig in Germany, and F. Gary Stiles of the Instituto de Ciencias Naturales at Colombia's Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

"The description of the species has been published in Ornitologica Neotropical, a well respected peer-reviewed journal," said Greg Butcher, Director of Bird Conservation for the Washington-based National Audubon Society. "The description of the bird in that journal leaves no doubt that it is a very distinctive species, and will be accepted as such by the ornithological community."

Investigators caught their first glimpse of the bird while surveying a mountain ridge in the Cauca province in 2005. Braving the zone's leftist rebels and drug traffickers, they returned to confirm the sighting, researchers said Sunday.

Ornithologists are urging the government to protect the bird's tiny territory from the environmentally ruinous drugs industry, which relies on slashing and burning large tracts of land to grow illegal crops such as coca, the raw material in cocaine.

They want the government declare a natural reserve of 494,000 acres to preserve land in the area.

The Hummingbird Conservancy estimates that coca-growing and other agriculture destroys 1,235 acres of forests surrounding the Gorgeted Puffleg's habitat each year.

The zone has seen a rise in growing of illegal crops in recent years as coca farmers have arrived escaping the government's eradication program in other parts of the country.

Researchers are particularly concerned because the bird has only been spotted on one mountain ridge.

Mazariegos-Hurtado said the Gorgeted Puffleg brings to 15 the number of species of the bird, mostly found in Colombia which is home to nearly half of the world's 300-plus species of hummingbirds.

Please enjoy the sighting of such a wonderful creature, and if you can spare a little assistance to its preservation, I hope you will join me in supporting such great institutions as the World Wildlife Foundation and the Audubon Society. We all suffer when these wonderful creatures are lost to us.

You Can't Trust The Eater Bunny

It's been lovely to see the huge bunnies that were given by a German breeder to the North Koreans. Now it's time for Easter dinner, and it seems the Bunnies were eaten. Sorry, it's not that funny for the bunnies. But Now there will be no more breeder bunnies on the table.

A German breeder of giant rabbits said Saturday that North Korea has canceled its invitation for him to visit the country to help breed the rabbits he sold to the North last year, saying he suspects they have already been eaten.

Karl Szmolinsky was scheduled to visit North Korea later this month after he sold 12 of the giant rabbits which weigh about 10kg each - around three times more than normal rabbits.

But an official from the North Korean Embassy in Berlin recently called Szmolinsky and told him of the cancellation, saying, "We can raise them ourselves so there's no need for the visit," according to the German breeder.

Calling the explanation "ambiguous," Szmolinsky said, "It seems like the rabbits have already been eaten. I will never sell to North Korea again."

Szmolinsky sold the 12 rabbits to help North Korea deal with its food shortages. A breeding program based on the 12 rabbits could produce about 94 rabbits a year.

This is who killed Easter, folks.

Hope For A Good Way to Honor MLK

First, in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday, I would like to recall his 1997 speech at Riverside Church , taking a stand against our nation's war in Vietnam.

Forty years ago at Riverside Church, people of conscience declared that "a time comes when silence is betrayal." This was said Saturday by Colbert I. King in an editorial honoring MLK and is ringingly true in many ways.

We are viewing an increasingly vocal opposition to the escalation of war in Iraq that the cretin in chief is proposing. Even the administration's staunch supporters over the past six years, in light of their increasingly irrational belligerence, are beginning to round on the irresponsible wasting of this nation's resources.

In the field of energy this White House has begun to show the effect of rational voices' condemnation of its refusal of accumulating evidence of global warming, and rejection of all rational elements.

The world at large is turning its attention to preservation of the earth, and dependence on the fossil fuels that have been at the core of much of the international thievery by the major powers.

CEBU, Philippines -- Asian and Pacific leaders signed an agreement Monday to help reduce their dependence on conventional sources of energy and promote the use of biofuels.

The Cebu Declaration on East Asian Energy Security was signed by leaders from Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, China and South Korea after a three-hour summit in the central Philippine city of Cebu.

ASEAN Leaders and their six Dialogue Partners prepare to sign documents during ceremony for the Cebu Declaration on Energy Security at the 2nd East Asia Summit in the ongoing 12th ASEAN Summit of Leaders with their six counterparts Monday, Jan. 15, 2007 in Cebu, central Philippines. The leaders are from left, President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Prime Ministers John Howard of Australia, Manmohan Singh of India, Helen Clark of New Zealand, and Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore (AP Photo/Pat Roque) (Pat Roque - AP)

The agreement lists a set of goals for "reliable, adequate and affordable" energy supplies essential for sustaining economic growth and competitiveness.
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ASEAN's members are the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

In South America, we have countries devoting their energy development to those biofuels, and in Brazil, increasingly in neighboring countries, ethanol is a major industry and hope for future resource development. Farmers raise the fuels, not international cartels.

There are signs that even the developmentally incapacitated administration here is beginning to realize that necessity is upon us. We have to establish a rational plan for energy sustenance, and we can do that by taking seriously a burgeoning new industry that supports our own people.

On Saturday I put the case for a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system to James Connaughton, the head of the Council on Environmental Quality at the White House. Far from denouncing these policies as eco-socialist nonsense, Connaughton sounded open to them. "In concept I can agree with you," he said. Something must be done to stem demand for climate-warming energy, and although there are several ways of getting there, a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system would be the most "elegant."

Whoa! This may be spin, but it's certainly new spin. Only a few months ago, Al Hubbard, director of Bush's National Economic Council, brushed aside the idea of a carbon tax: "The American people are not interested in paying more for gasoline," he told me, sounding like a frog in the path of a herd of elephants who says he's not interested in jumping.

Next week we'll see whether Connaughton's reasonable-sounding views are reflected in Bush's State of the Union speech. The key thing to watch is whether Bush talks only about energy security or whether he emphasizes climate. Energy security is mostly a dumb objective, but climate policy is crucial.

It's true that the United States imports 60 percent of its petroleum, about double the share of two decades ago. But cutting U.S. oil imports won't insulate the nation from instability in petro-states. There is a global price for oil, and Americans will feel the hit from a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia or a rebellion in Nigeria whether they fill their trucks with gas that's foreign or domestic. Equally, cutting U.S. oil imports won't really punish the bad guys in Iran or Venezuela. The United States has shut out Iranian oil imports since 1979, but Iran gets the global price for its crude, no matter whom it sells to.

A mistaken focus on energy security can undermine good policy on climate.

This is a hopeful development, although of course the source being this White House, there is bound to be the usual corruption and misapplication of our resources. At least, though, it is more promising than repeating past mistakes while expecting different results.

World At Risk

Great rewards have been reaped by the supporters of the oil companies, and from the state of this country the public at large has suffered a lot. It isn't difficult for the oil industries to find itself willing servants when it has such control and such means of rewarding their efforts. Global warming has been a result of disregard of all the serious science that showed what was happening - while the U.S. and China among the worst offenders plowed on into a dimming future in total disregard of the steps needed.

A body of science that disputed the evidence pointing to global warming appears to have been just another oil by-product in bad need of cleaning up.

Yesterday I got into a discussion with fellow Atriot 'Moe' about the Hudson Bay area, and he, as a (new) Canadian, was quite familiar with the damage being done by oil industry there. Looking into it I found a lot of sources, and am putting one that was warning us a few years back in here;

In recent years, scientists have become increasingly concerned over damage to the arctic environment caused by petroleum, hydroelectric, mining, and other large-scale development projects. Additional apprehensions are expressed as the Circumpolar North becomes a major depository for organic pollutants and heavy metals derived from sources both within and outside the Arctic. Thinning of the ozone layer with a corresponding increase in ultra-violet radiation is expected to have significant effects on biological organisms in the region, which in turn, will promote further disturbance in the atmosphere. The impact of human activities encourages melting of the northern permafrost, thereby creating the potential for destroying large portions of tundra ecosystems. Risks associated with the release of radionuclides into the environment have also multiplied, of which extensive military dumping of nuclear wastes into the Arctic Ocean is but one example.

While the most dramatic evidence of environmental devastation and rising health problems is found in the Russian north, serious threats are by no means confined to that area alone. Nor are the negative effects limited to the borders of the countries in which they originated. Indeed, the deleterious ecological impact of our global industrial economy has become sufficiently profound that growing numbers of policy-makers are beginning to ask whether existing natural resource development strategies causing such harm to the Arctic should continue, and if not, what should take their place.

Listening to Ohio Representative Marci Kaptur last night talking about development of alternative resources, I was struck by her naming the many most wealthy companies, most were oil companies. Her point was that by allowing them to dominate energy production, we were sending the profits of our own society abroad rather than supporting our employees, our industries, and our economy that rests on these. I would point out that with the proven destructive nature of petroleum energy productions, we're threatening the world as well.

The business world likes to revere self-interest as a healthy underlying motif. It looks from the nature of industry's actively undermining healthier industries, self-interest in the larger world scene is working in the interest of self-destruction. Like cockroaches, the minions of big oil may survive what wipes out the rest of us, but only if they're not the same species. And I don't really believe they are, just inferior in their regard for life forms.

Got Ice?

From a paper on the threat of global warming, written by an environmentalist some years back, I found this literally numbing description of the prospect;

A big enough rise of global temperatures would eventually melt the world's glaciers, and indeed a retreat of mountain glaciers since the 19th century was apparent in some regions. That would release enough water to raise the sea level a bit. Worse, beginning in the 1960s, several glacier experts warned that part of the Antarctic ice sheet seemed unstable. If the huge mass slid into the ocean, the rise of sea level would wreak great harm, perhaps within the next century or two. While that seemed unlikely (although not impossible), by the 1980s scientists realized that global warming would probably raise sea level enough to damage populous coastal regions.

There is some truth that is stranger than fiction, and more threatening than scientific predictions. One of them occurred yesterday.

A giant ice shelf has snapped free from an island south of the North Pole, scientists said Thursday, citing climate change as a "major" reason for the event. The Ayles Ice Shelf — all 41 square miles of it — broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 500 miles south of the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic.
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Derek Mueller, a polar researcher with Vincent's team, said the ice shelves get weaker and weaker as temperatures rise. He visited Ellesmere Island in 2002 and noticed that another ice shelf had cracked in half.

"We're losing our ice shelves and this a feature of the landscape that is in danger of disappearing altogether from Canada," Mueller said.

What are the polar bears going to do now? It seems that our wasting the planet's resources has brought about the grim prospect that we may have wiped many more species off the earth. Time to get out the rotary mower and turn down the thermostat. No, well past time.

Here's Your Mission; Save the Earth, Pls

Melting ... that's the way polar bears now see their world. The news is grim, and a Newshour report on PBS last night cited the findings that in about 40 years the summer ice may be gone from the Alaskan coast.

From this administration we have the findings being treated as a nuisance, that the cretins will treat with a bit of seriousness since everyone's calling them names, but that they, in power, will not deal with as if this were a big deal;

The proposal calls for polar bears to be listed as "threatened" because the species is not considered at immediate risk of becoming extinct, which would be categorized as "endangered."

Kempthorne says Alaskan natives and others who hunt the bears can continue to harvest the animals. And coastal and offshore oil and gas exploration can continue. "Oil and gas development is not a factor," he says, "period."

The proposal to add the bears to the list came after a two-year fight.

"It's frustrating to wait, but at the same time, it is still a significant step forward," says Brendan Cummings, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, who filed suit to seek polar bear protection.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the incoming head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, says the polar bear's plight reflects the planet's health. "This news serves as a wake-up call to the U.S. Congress and the administration that we must quickly begin to address global warming through legislative action," she says.

From the Endangered Species Act, the injunction comes to the government to avoid authorizing activities that might further destroy the environment for threatened species, but the administration will not slow or stop exploration for oil, gas and minerals, or the 'development' of those resources.

There is a hopeful beginning in Maryland from the other end of the spectrum, where frightening levels of pollution from automobile exhausts are provably increasing the risk of residents' developing cancer.

The cancer risk from breathing polluted air in Maryland's largest jurisdictions far exceeds the federal government standard, environmental advocates said yesterday, urging lawmakers to join 11 other states in restricting tailpipe emissions when the General Assembly convenes next month.

A report released by Environment Maryland found the highest level of cancer-causing air toxins in the city of Baltimore, followed by Baltimore, Montgomery and Prince George's counties. The group based its study on data released this year by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Brad Heavner, state director of the research center, an offshoot of the Maryland Public Interest Research Group, called the level of air pollutants "just staggering."

The threat to our air is from our own hands - and the solutions are available to us. In Maryland a coalition is working to raise the standards of auto emissions, and require car manufacturers to use the technology available to make cleaner cars, cleaner air. In trying to make the air safe for us humans, we are taking one step toward saving the planet, a late one and a small one.

In Austin TX, there will be a workshop for religious groups - including Buddhist and Wiccan, to name a few - to work for social justice and environmental improvement, on January 13.

Texas Impact invites you to a networking and training event focused on advocacy for social justice on January 13, 2007. The purpose of this event is to provide information, skills, and networking opportunities for congregations wishing to start or strengthen social justice groups. The timing also coincides with the beginning of the legislative session.

We are excited to have the Reverend Emilee Whitehurst, Executive Director of Austin Area Interreligious Ministries, as our keynote speaker.

Several area leaders in social justice will lead workshops addressing topics such as:

How to start or enhance a social justice group in your congregation
How to use Internet resources in social justice work
How to do effective legislative advocacy
How to deal with apathy on the one hand and controversy on the other
Theological basis for social justice advocacy in various faith traditions

Bee Moorhead, Executive Director of Texas Impact, will give an update on social justice and environmental issues facing Texas in the 2007 legislative session.

I guess it's time to put the money where the mouth is. Of course, I had the great privilege of working on the original Endangered Species Act[and worked for an environmentally committed progressive candidate in the 2006 election] - I suppose I could sit here at home on my laurels and tell the rest of you Get Out There and save our earth. I'll cheer for you. But I just may have to do more. I do, indeed, urge you if you have the chance, this is an event that looks really worthwhile, and productive. There will be others. Let's get cracking, the ice is already there.

Put the Creatures back in Creature Comfort

Okay, I thought that critter line up a long time ago. When I was working with Senator Yarborough's office in the dark ages, I was the person in charge of environmental stuff. No one much cared about the environment then, in 1966-8, so I talked over with Richard Yarborough the fact that the Ivory Billed Woodpecker was endangered, and we decided to introduce a bill to give federal protection to the bird. As you may realize, that became the first bill to give federal protection to an endangered species, and Senator Yarborough went on to introduce the first general legislation that gave all endangered species that protection.

Of course, the thugs in office now don't like interfering with corruption of the environment and giving such responsible, stewardship role to the government. Where profits are concerned, rape is the recommended procedure - and we have increasing global warming which shows the cretin in chief's hand at work. Tony Blair actually is on BBC this a.m. pointing out that the collapse of our environment is reaching great depression levels of damage.

Who's in charge here? A civil engineer who has taken the role of mocking environmental concerns and giving industry veto powers over saving species. And here's how she operates

After she declared that the endangered Santa Barbara and Sonoma salamanders were no longer "distinct populations" entitled to protection, William Alsup, a judge on the U.S. District Court for Northern California, ruled that MacDonald had arbitrarily instructed Fish and Wildlife scientists to downgrade the two species even though an agency scientist concluded that "genetics state otherwise."
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Two advocacy groups, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Center for Biological Diversity, provided the documents to The Washington Post. Francesca Grifo, who directs the union's scientific integrity program, said MacDonald's actions are "not business as usual but a systemic problem of tampering with science that is putting our environment at risk."

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During a separate rulemaking concerning the threatened bull trout's habitat on the Klamath River, Fish and Wildlife officials debated via e-mail on how to respond to MacDonald. Her questions, they believed, reflected the concerns of Ronald Yockim, a lawyer representing three Idaho counties opposing a pending decision to protect nearly 300 miles of the river. After MacDonald's intervention, Fish and Wildlife officials opted to protect 42 miles instead.

John Young, a Fish and Wildlife biologist, wrote to several colleagues: "Yockim is an attorney representing various interest groups. It appears that Julie has shared our responses to her comments with Yockim, which have generated additional comments from Yockim. It seems to me it would be inappropriate to essentially continue the public comment period (it is closed) by contacting and responding to his follow-up questions/comments that he did not provide during the comment period."

'I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree', to remind you of Ogden Nash's limericks. 'But unless that billboard shall fall, I shall never see a tree at all.'

What a shame if a few dollars were to get in the way of saving species that we have threatened by thoughtless development.

If you have a chance, please take a walk and listen to the birds singing. It may be your last chance to do that.

by Ruth