Bad Deeds for 1-18-2008

Mitch McConnell Calls Himself an Environmental Leader While Helping Oil and Gas Companies Generate Dirty Energy – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has received more than half a million dollars in campaign contributions from the oil and gas lobbyists who look to him for help with troublesome bills. In 2006, McConnell supported a $5 billion tax windfall for the industry. He even went so far as to raise an objection in the Senate that led to the cancellation of a Live Earth benefit concert. McConnell’s recent decision to call himself an environmental leader adds an extra element of shamefulness to his already disgraceful behavior.

The Republican Senate that McConnell controls and the White House he cultivates came together — on behalf of the oil industry and the utility interests, by blocking the restoration of $13 billion in taxes on fabulous petroleum profits and shielding the power companies from a requirement to produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable resources. …But the real winners were the lobbyists for big Republican campaign givers, who succeeded in blocking the restoration of billions in taxes on the big oil companies, which are squeezing American consumers for more than $100 billion per year in profits, thanks to huge price hikes at the pump. Had that tax provision survived, the proceeds would have financed clean energy development. Also, falling before the pressure of lobbyists was a requirement that utilities produce 15 percent of their electricity by wind, solar and other renewable means by 2020. This was a huge victory for the operators of dirty coal-fired plants in the Midwest and South. This is what Mitch McConnell and George W. Bush did for Big Energy, and did to the rest of us.

Bush Administration Abandons Jaguar Recovery – Due to a Center for Biological Diversity lawsuit, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the jaguar as an endangered species in 1997. The New World’s largest cat formerly occurred from Monterey Bay, California across the southern states to the southern Appalachian Mountains. It was extirpated from the United States in 1963 when the last female was shot by federal agents. In recent years, however, the jaguar has been making a comeback, with a small but steady number of sightings in southern Arizona and New Mexico.

Rather than support the return of the jaguar, the Bush administration today issued its death warrant. In a first-of-its-kind decision in the 34-year history of the Endangered Species Act, the administration abandoned recovering the jaguar as a federal goal. It will not prepare a recovery plan or ensure the species recovers, either in the United States or throughout the animal’s range, extending to South America.

Our Water is at Risk – For over thirty years, the Clean Water Act has provided essential safeguards to all waters. However, two muddied U.S. Supreme Court decisions and an organized attack by industry polluters and developers are threatening protections for 20 million acres of wetlands and 60% of our nation’s streams! To add insult to injury, the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently issued a vague and confusing “guidance” that further erodes critical protection on our waters. The guidance is seriously flawed and will lead to more polluted water. In its current form, the guidance leaves many so-called “isolated” waters such as wetlands open for destruction, leaves many headwaters and streams without clear protection, and ignores legal tools that could be used to preserve America’s waters. The EPA is currently taking public comments on this “misguided” guidance. But time is running out. The public can comment until January 21. Take action.

Global Warming Mostly Ignored in Presidential Debates – Of the nearly 2,500 questions asked of the presidential candidates by the top five TV political reporters during 2007, only three mentioned global warming. Three! (That’s a whopping one-tenth of one percent.) In more than 140 presidential debates and interviews these television hosts have moderated, they have spent more time talking about baseball, UFOs and Chuck Norris than they have about global warming. Sign the petition urging reporters to get serious about addressing climate change during the remainder of the campaign.

Bush Administration Wants to Speed Up the Process of Giving Away the Polar Bear’s Habitat to Big Oil Companies – Scientists tell us that two-thirds of all polar bears may be gone by 2050 due to global warming. Instead of addressing this, the Bush Administration wants to speed up the process of giving away the polar bear’s habitat to big oil companies. Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that they would be about a month late in finalizing their decision on the threatened species status of the polar bear. The decision was supposed to be made by January 9th. Earlier that week, Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne announced that a sale of oil and gas leases in the polar bear’s habitat will take place on February 6th.

Regards,

Jim