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Obama Gives 'Lump of Coal' to Polar Bears: Activists
WASHINGTON - Environmental groups on Thursday accused US President Barack Obama's administration of failing to ensure the survival of polar bears after it stopped short of listing the animals as endangered.
Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, who has led legal efforts to protect the polar bear, said that the Obama administration "sacrificed sound science for political expediency."
"The Obama administration delivered a lump of coal to the polar bear for Christmas," she said in a statement.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service, responding to a legal suit, agreed Wednesday that climate change posed "serious threats" to the polar bears by melting their Arctic habitat in the northernmost state of Alaska.
But the service said the threat was "in the foreseeable future" and that polar bears were not "in danger of extinction." A listing as endangered would likely lead to federal protection of areas rich in oil and gas.
Andrew Wetzler of the Natural Resources Defense Council questioned the administration's logic, saying: "I guess if a wrecking ball is barreling down on your house, you are just 'threatened.'"
The decision left in place a 2008 ruling under president George W. Bush, whose administration was much less eager than predecessors to protect animals under the Endangered Species Act.
The Obama administration has pledged to become more active in fighting climate change, and it incurred the wrath of the oil industry on Thursday by announcing it would regulate greenhouse gas emissions by power plants.
Last month, the Fish and Wildlife Service set aside 187,000 square miles (484,000 square kilometers) off Alaska's northern shore as a bear habitat, which means any project that could impact the animals' way of life must undergo careful review.
The northern polar cap has shrunk between 15 and 20 percent over the last 30 years. But a recent study in the British journal Nature said that the melting was not inevitable and could be reversed.
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33 Comments so far
Show All"Obama Gives 'Lump of Coal' to Polar Bears: Activists." Obama's whole administration is a lump of coal. And you conservatives out there we will be watching everything you do and will stop anything that does not promote American values like helping others and thinking of others before your selfish selves. November did not mean a thing except to underline the fact that when your 8 years was up you destroyed this country forever.
Please stop keep using "inherited" and pass the buck to the Republicans. The buck stops at Obama. The most useless President ever!
Maybe you are not aware, (an off topic example) It took Obama just only two years to change the Net Neutrality rule while Dubya tried twice and eight years with two FCC Commissioners and failed miserable.
I can't stand the Obama Administration either, because they've so screwed the people who voted them into office. I admittedly did a write-in vote at the polls a couple of years ago, because I saw what was coming. I'd just as soon see Obama put out to pasture for the stuff that he's pulled since taking office (the list is too long to write here), and I hope that happens.
However, I can just see what'll happen right now, if impeachment proceedings are slapped on Obama for his part in perpetuating the crap that's gone on in this country and continuing 8 years of G. W. Bush's rule. There'll be riots in the streets, with people burning down their own neighborhoods, looting, and running through the streets screaming and howlling, and the ex-flower children and their offspring who helped Obama win the 2008 POTUS Election will either join them or cheer them on .
There'll be a backlash from areas such as Bensonhurst, Southie, and other such neighborhoods like them all across the United States, and the overall chaos that ensues will make the riots that followed MLK's assassination and the riots that broke out in Boston over mandatory school busing pale by comparison. As a consequence, whole areas will be put under martial law, with a possible application of martial law for the whole USA. Nice!
I have bad news for you. Obama polls consistently hovering in the forties. It's almost fifties now, from a spate of recent Dem. victories in Congress. NPR yesterday reported the economy will improve in 2011. What you hope for will never happens, the Black and diehard Dem. will sink or swim with him. All he needs is to con some Independent/Progressive over and he is in for another term. If the last two years are bad, think of will happen in 2nd term.
American have short memory, and clueless, NOT ALL but enough to swing the pendulum most of the time.
sivasm, if the hostility and hatred in this country that reared its ugly head prior to and after Obama's election as POTUS is any indication, I don't see where my" worst-case scenario" is impossible.
I see, to put in mildly, an undercurrent of racism in you remark.
When I was collecting signatures for a Green candidate here in Pittsburgh, many black residents gladly signed. Except for some rich ones, black USAns are not happy with Obama either.
move
independentminded
Base on the past and the numbers of Americans in the category you mentioned it will never happen. Also referring to RichardsCatz in one of his post in CD "2/3 still eating" never mind what they eat. They are eating! Not that I believe in everything Richard or anyone said here, he go a point. 2/3 still eating!
Which Republican do you see? Sara Palin? Haley Barbour? Mitt Romney? Though I don't like Obama, I don't see any Repugnicans that could even get close in an election-- at least today.
Correction:
"Obama's whole administration is a lump of shit....."
But... it's shit we can believe in, doncha know?
I never did and I still don't. do you really believe it?
I should have been clearer about the sarcasm in the statement. No, I figured Obomber would be just what he is.
Nope.
But at least it's a lump of "clean" coal!
Oh joy!
Are there any really lump of "clean" coal, or have you been smoking the stuff the Obama folks been handling out since 2008?
Happy holiday and that's the best I can say for now.
"Melt Down"
from stardust 12-24-10
For Polar bears on ice--it's not
very nice---to starve away.
The purity of ice and bear
no where--earth dies today.
For oil, it has a stranglehold,
not bold--this corporate way,
they slay---life sighs,--a frown
bears drown--our world melts down.***
John -- I'm not sure I agree with your post 100% , but it is thoughtful and contains a lot of truth.
Thanks.
The tragedy of the Obama Administration is that his duplicity has jaded even die-hard optimists. Maybe that's also a blessing, since any kind of hope that a US President will act with honor, integrity, compassion, must be eliminated in order for the system to truly collapse.
Obama, like Bush, is doing an excellent job at dismantling the things that worked and handing what's left to the wealthy elites.
I am amazed to find myself thinking things about him similar to what the Tea Partiers were saying months ago. The TP seems like a racist white backlash, and their understanding of context is nil, but Obama IS a fascist. Every step he takes is pro-corporate, pro-wealthy, anti-poor, anti-environment. He has given his daughters a most horrible legacy to live with, a father who has betrayed everything he said he stood for.
A very ugly period of fascism will be followed by collapse, hopefully the "United States" will break into a number of regions which will be governed by the actual people inhabiting them. As the environmental degradation continues, various forms of infrastructure will also fall apart, forcing people to deal regionally, weakening the ability of any federal powers to act as the federal powers ultimately disintegrate. Any dying beast will grasp and claw and do damage as it goes down, which is what the wealthy elite of earth are doing now; hoarding all they can in the erroneous belief that it will protect them.
I am no christian, I espouse no apocalyptic fantasies, but the facts are the facts. We've done so much damage to the ecosphere, the life-giving aspects of the surface of Earth, and with oil drilling we have done untold damage to the mechanism by which the crust of the planet rests on the layers beneath. There will be consequences. Heck, look at Europe today...blanketed in snow and ice as a result of the disruption of the North Atlantic Current which happened because of the BP oil disaster, which expanded the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico and put huge amounts of chemicals into the water changing viscosity and salinity this disrupting the transfer of heat northwards via the North Atlantic current.
The shit is hittin' the fan!
Corporations want the melting to access fossil fuels and minerals and shorter sea routes.
"under go careful review" carefully crafted to ignore obvious damage.
Anybody who does not realize by now that Oilybomber is a world class fascist is in very deep denial.
Indeed.
recently the center for biological diversity sent me a video of a mother polaf bear and two cubs. she was starving, had lost all her body fat. her beautiful nursing cubs could get no sustenance from her. as we watched one cub went into violent convulsions. i think perhaps the ap picture may be the same family. we were told that neither cub survived.
yeah, you know the rush for dwindling oil supplies has more to do with this lump of coal than any real concern for bears, bats, bees, trees or even youse and mees. like the tortured people of iraq, they make a home on our oil.
they're insurgents.
It's sad that Obama doesn't even care about animals--but why should this surprise anyone as he doesn't care about humans either--only his family and Wall St. cronies.
Happy Holidays Everyone.
miniwood.
It's no use thinking that a President and his cronies such as all members of the Senate or the House will ever do anything for the majority. Republican and Democrate they are all tared with the same wealth ( except maybe a couple who are really socialist in thinking )
The only way for change to happen is from the bottom with small groups working together being prepared to do something about the hell that is being heaped on them. A couple of marksmen taking out the mongrels at the top is the way to go.
Humans are what they are. Life on this planet will, in time, fight for its survival. Intelligent design applies to the smallest microbe. As with humans, each and every form will do whatever is necessary to continue to live, and if that means cooperating with each other to remove humans from the planet, then so be it. As a life form, I know this to be law.
Prepare to be ambushed and annihilated.
Peace-out
Bears and Ducks. I am fascinated by Bears and ducks. I do not know what it is. All animals fascinate me to some degree or another but bears and ducks just trigger something else and I do not know what the heck it is.
THAT nonsense aside. One thing that bothers me are these "eco-tours".
So I read in a paper an account of a guide "forced to shoot a polar bear because it was a threat to the Tourists" on some eco-tour on a remote Island In Canadas High North.
Ok the way *I* think.
If you really care about these animals and do not want to see them getting shot maybe you should not go out of your way to take a picture of them in the wild so that they have to be shot?
Humankind has its technology. We are well past the "species must survive mode" wherein tribes of human drifted to all corners of the globe. We can survive and indeed prosper as a species by retreating to our cities. We can leave the rest of this Earth to all of those creatures that nature has created , sit back and experience the sheer JOY and beauty of it all.
God KNOWS this world needs its Polar bears and Ducks a heck of a lot more then it needs its Exxons and its Boeings.