I disagree with this rosy assessment of Mr. Obama. Meanwhile Voltarian wit and world-weary poses alone have limited value when one is trying mightily to keep the grandchildren from suffocating in a world devastated by global warming. Is there anyone who can look honestly at the dire ecological and political situation and come up with some ideas for moving forward? It looks like the most effective approaches may come from places outside the US, such as Brazil. So until then, I support 350.org and all the anti-fracking and ecological activists here.

Here is the thing, they weren't worse under Bush, Oily Bomber has maintained a horrible trend trend and in many ways extended. I know people who get all their info from Daily Kos will be dumbfounded, but we on the left tracking Obama's actual policy decisions DESPISE Oily Bomber. Here is a small taste of his environmental record for example:

"It’s been a triumphant month for Big Oil. First, the Obama administration teamed with the Chinese delegation to scuttle the timid climate agenda at the Durban summit. Then recidivist offender British Petroleum won the rights to drill once again in the perilous depths of the Gulf of Mexico. And last week the Interior Department gave the green light for Shell to begin exploratory drilling in the pristine Chukchi Sea on Alaska’s western coast.

These environmental body-blows elicited barely a murmur of protest from the green establishment and as the presidential election draws near even those faint critiques will fade away and inevitably be replaced by an REI-clad chorus singing Obama’s praises as an ecologically enlightened chief executive. The crazed encomiums have already begun. Carl Pope, recently deposed from his twenty-year-long autocracy over the Sierra Club, ludicrously pronounced Obama the greatest environmental president in history.

Yet, when it comes to protection of the environment Obama’s no Richard Nixon. Indeed, he’s barely even George W. Bush. Let’s look at revealing numbers from the national forests. During Bush’s first three years in office, the Forest Service sold 4,792,702 MBF (thousand board feet) of timber logged from the national forests. During Obama’s first three years in office, his team of chainsaw zealots nearly doubled Bush’s frightful totals, selling 7,641,484 MBF. (See Sold-Harvest Documents, 1905-2011, National Summary Graph, US Forest Service.) Even worse, Obama’s Forest Service cloaks this grim enterprise under the dubious premise of “ecological forestry” and “biomass production.” Recall that this high level of logging is occurring during an economic recession and prolonged slump in the housing market. If the economy ever picks up, Obama may even break the logging records set by Clinton after the Rider From Hell.

As for coal mining, according to the annual coal report prepared by the US Energy Information Administration, total coal production has actually increased since Bush left office, bulging from 1,070.9 million short tons in 2008 to 1,084.4 million short tons in 2010. Coal consumption has climbed even faster, rising more than five percent under Obama’s tenure. So much for energy conservation. But don’t tell that to Bill McKibben. While leading the protests in front of the White House against the Keystone XL Pipeline, the Cassandra of Climate Change was proudly sporting an Obama button.

Despite the ongoing crisis at Fukushima, Obama has recklessly boosted the fortunes of the nuclear power industry in the United States. Just this week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the design plans for three new nuclear power plants slated for construction in Georgia and South Carolina, the first new plants in the nation in the last thirty years. This shouldn’t have surprised anyone familiar with Obama’s political career, which has long been sponsored by the Exelon Corporation, which operates 17 nuclear reactors, most of them in Illinois.

Wildlife isn’t faring any better. In the Pacific Northwest, the Obama administration wasted little time before endorsing a plan for endangered salmon stocks that was crafted by the Bush administration following instructions from the aluminum companies and the industrial agriculture lobby. A federal judge shot down the scheme and ordered the Obama administration to evaluate tearing down several fish-killing dams on the Snake River. Obama officials chafed at the ruling and pleaded with Congress to over-ride the judge’s decision.

In Yellowstone, Obama has opened a three-pronged attack against the region’s most iconic species: wolves, grizzlies and bison. Obama has moved to delist both the gray wolf and the Yellowstone grizzly from the protections afforded each under the Endangered Species Act. Thanks to Obama, the State of Idaho wants to allow hunters to kill 550 wolves, out of a total population of 700 wolves. The state of Montana, run by Obama’s pal Brian Schweitzer, is looking to kill more than 100 wolves from a population of only 425 animals. Again only a federal judge stands in the way of a region-wide massacre. Obama has also continued the depraved slaughter of Yellowstone’s bison herd under the bogus pretext of protecting local cattle from brucellosis. Since Obama took office more than 1,300 bison have been killed after wandering across the park’s invisible boundary.

One of the most noxious agencies in the entire federal government is an outpost of Agriculture Department known as the division of Wildlife Services, which functions as little more than a death squad for ranchers and developers. During the Bush Administration, the hunter-killer teams at Wildlife Services annually shot, trapped or poisoned hundreds of thousands of birds, mammals and reptiles. Many wildlife advocates hoped that the Obama Administration would defund the agency’s bloody work, which has no ecological or scientific merit. Instead, funding for Wildlife Services has actually increased marginally under Obama and the death toll continues to mount. The agency’s most recent report reveals the scope of the slaughter: 586 black bears, 27,218 beavers, 568,000 redwing blackbirds, 1,400 bobcats, 1,500 green iguanas, 367 mountain lions, 200 barn owls, 452 gray wolves, 20,500 black prairie dogs, 527 badgers, and 572 river otters. Of those river otters, 455 were killed “unintentionally.” Just more collateral damage in Obama’s indiscriminate war on wildlife.

It takes guts for an environmental group to stand up to a Democratic president in an election year and call him on his betrayals. You risk being marginalized and stripped of your funding by the Democratic-aligned foundations that underwrite most of the mainstream groups. Here are ten groups who stand up for what they stand on, who put protection of the environment before politics. They all operate close to the bone, their meager budgets are spent on activism and litigation, not on self-promoting direct mail operations, glitzy offices or bloated administrative expenses. These groups will put your money to work defending the planet. Now pony up!"

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/23/ten-small-green-groups-that-make-...

mrcrow

Thanks. But....

I realize that I should have written "Earth First!" -- I forgot to add the exclamation point -- and that exclamatory and emphatic piece of punctuation is both hard-won and well-deserved given the dedicated work of the Earth First! activists and the quality of their advocacy on behalf of the planet.

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