Midnight Enviro Rules Expose the Real Bush Agenda: Preventing Change
Published December 19, 2008 @ 02:00PM PT
The latest addition to Bush Administration's tidal wave of midnight regulations is a new rule -- imposed without required public comment -- that limits the definition of navigable waters. Sound innocent enough, but it serves to remove protections for important wetlands under the Clean Water Act.
Among the countless small bodies of water to be affected: the wildlife-rich, though intermittent, Los Angeles River. (When a government biologist kayaked a 20-mile portion of the river in July to prove it was navigable, despite new definitions to the contrary, she was threatened with suspension.)
This is just one of a long list of President Bush's last-minute changes to regulations regarding smog, toxics, global warming, and endangered species protections. The new rules and policies have been widely condemned (or celebrated, depending on your point of view) as a last-gasp bid to impose epic change on American environmentalism -- to the benefit of oil companies, the coal industry, climate change deniers, developers, and polluters of all sorts.
But beyond the specifics of the new rules, the larger perception that President Bush is trying to change things by doing all this is false. The regulatory makeover, from wetlands to walruses, is really about preventing change.
At their core, the midnight rules represent a plan to perpetuate what the Bush Administration has been doing all along: blocking action on greenhouse gas emissions, consigning imperiled species to extinction, and opening up record amounts of irreplaceable public forests, wildlands and parks to private exploitation.
Bush did all this without new regulations, or to be more precise, he did all this despite existing laws and regulations that required him to do the opposite. The midnight rules, then, are really about handcuffing the next president from reversing the actions of an outlaw administration -- an attempt to make the illegal conduct of the last eight years into the law of the land that Barack Obama will inherit.
"Outlaw" is the correct term when it comes to Bush and the environment. He and his cabinet members have near-constantly violated the Endangered Species Act since taking office, and have regularly violated provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act and other environmental laws and regulations.
62 species have been listed under the Endangered Species Act during the Bush years. (That averages out to around 7.6 listings a year -- the lowest annual rate of any president since species protections began, during the Johnson administration). They were made only under court order, or after lawsuits pointed out the administration's violations of the law.
This week, the Interior Department's inspector general reported that a Bush appointee broke the law while interfering in at least 15 endangered species decisions.
The Bush administration's latest decisions on the environmental front make it even clearer that the midnight rules are about preventing change rather than promoting it:
- The administration has refused to list as endangered the Emperor penguin and two other species, whose survival is threatened by polar ice melting. (The administration, under court order, has proposed listing five penguin species as threatened and one as endangered.)
- 110,000 acres adjacent to treasured national parks in Utah have been opened up for oil and gas drilling, over the objections of every major environmental group in the country -- as well as the National Park Service.
In both cases, these actions were taken despite a legal requirement that the administration consider global warming and greenhouse gas emissions as possible threats to imperiled species and their habitats, and despite a legal requirement that scientists from the Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies be consulted, and their findings given precedence over economic considerations. Lawsuits are planned or have already been filed by coalitions of environmental groups to overturn both actions.
The penguin and oil lease actions were taken not under the new midnight rules, but under old regulations that Bush has largely ignored or defied throughout his presidency. The next president likely would handle these issues differently. This is why the midnight rules would, among other things, take global warming off the table when considering extinction threats under the Endangered Species Act. They would also eliminate the need to consult federal scientists from outside the agencies championing a project that could affect endangered species.
Under the new regs, the Bureau of Land Management, for example, could issue oil leases after consulting itself, rather than being forced to consider the scientific opinions of other government agencies, such as the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Bush's midnight rulemaking retroactively legalizes his administration's past eight years of environmental lawlessness. Says Kassie Siegel, head of the climate program for the Center for Biological Diversity: "The Bush administration has repackaged the same old lump of coal as a holiday present."
But these last-minute regulations can still be fought: by the next president, by Congress, and by citizen lawsuits that challenge them for violating the laws they are supposed to be enacting.
Image: Emperor penguins with young. Photographer: Giuseppe Zibordi. Credit: Michael Van Woert, NOAA NESDIS, ORA
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Comments (9)
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Author
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Edward Humes is the author of eight critically acclaimed nonfiction books, including the bestseller Mississippi Mud and, most recently, Monkey Girl. He has received the Pulitzer Prize for his journalism and is writer-at-large for Los Angeles magazine. He lives in California. His latest book, ECO BARONS: The Dreamers, Schemers & Millionaires Who are Saving Our Planet, was published in March 2009 by Ecco/Harper Collins. To visit his blog, click here.
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The midnight regulations really need to go. It is my hope that President-Elect Obama gives himself license to take full measures to reverse these horrors. The earth and many species are counting on it. The public is behind significant change. If the new cabinet moves in the direction of staying the courses, they will need to be bypassed. The kinds of issues that have become even more dangerous under Bush need a serious reversal. Rev. Bookburn - Radio Volta
Posted by Rev Bookburn on 12/19/2008 @ 06:29PM PT
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When is Bush and his administration going to pay for their crimes? Aren't there any individuals out there who want to see justice for the atrocities that have been executed during the last eight years? Bush just keeps at it until the last days of his reign leaving more pain and corruption in his wake.
J. Jennings
Posted by J. Jennings on 12/20/2008 @ 12:36AM PT
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I am deeply offended by the choice of Rick Warren for the inauguration invocation. I was planning on going to DC to join in the celebrations but have now canceled my trip. How could I be present at an event partly presided by someone so divisive and dimissive of me as a human being. I worked so hard to get Mr. Obama elected, and now I feel like he has taken my support for granted. If he wanted to be inclusive, he should have chosen to include those of us who have been excluded for the past 8 years, not someone who represents religious thinking under the Bush Administration. This type of political pandering, and politics as usual "payback" is not what I imagined I would be facing before Mr Obama even takes office. It also makes me reevaluate Mr Obama's sincerity about all of the other issues on which he campaigned. I imagined Mr Obama ro be someone I could be friends with, who probably had friends like my friends. With the choice of Rev. Warren he has demonstrated to me that the characterization of "the other" used to smear him by his political enemies during the campaign might actually be accurate. He certainly does not feel like "one=2 0of us" to me any longer... I can't imagine that now that Mr Obama has been elected my sincere comment here will make any difference to him or to those working with him, but on the off chance that anyone even bothers to read these things anynore, I want to convey in the strongets way the tremendous feeling of being used, and deceived that I and my friends and family are feeling by this act of betrayal to his core base, in an effort to pander politically to group of people who did not supprt him, and did not vote for him. I would like to recieve a personal response to this note...
Regretfully
Frank Franca
Posted by Frank Franca on 12/20/2008 @ 07:32PM PT
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While it will not solve every single problem, that these last minute midnight deregulations have brought upon us, there is a simple solution for some of them. New laws should be brought about - using the same type of presidential executive orders that Bush used - that will tax any company that takes advantage of these midnight deregulations into oblivion. Call it a disincentive tax if you will.
Those companies that ignore their new found legal "rights" from Bush - would face no tax penalties whatsoever. Those that take advantage of them - to gut the environment - should face a tax penalty so severe - they are forced into bankruptcy. It should be a harsh - and extremely severe tax. It should be a punishment so terrible, that no industry in America would want it imposed on them.
And THEN if it is still possible to add any fines to this, do so.
Posted by David Potter on 12/21/2008 @ 12:21AM PT
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every one needs to plant ten hemp/marijuana plants and request hemp products thus fixing the co2 misbalance in our atmosphere and put the petroleum companies out of business and litteraly green the earth!!!!!!!!
THEN on a bad day u could even smoke some and turn ur gloomy day bright and shiny!!!!!!!!
Posted by rev baker aka rev420 on 12/21/2008 @ 12:52PM PT
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the bush administration will go down in history as the darkest, most destructive administration ever. Let's work towards NEVER having another republican administration ever......... is that possible?
If only animals could vote, what a different world this would be.......
Posted by amber lopez on 12/21/2008 @ 10:08PM PT
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Amber, I understand your frustration with the republican party, I have issues with this amin. also. Please consider though with no republican party we would still have slavery, no voter rights act, no civil rights act, no USEPA. The first three were all passed by the republicans against the will of the democrats. The fourth by Nixon, I am not sure the Democrat position. We need at least two parties in this country for healthy dialogue. This was proven within this terrible amin. by the stopping of ANWR drilling.
Posted by Charlie Reed on 12/22/2008 @ 10:29AM PT
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All of those things may be true, but during the time that slavery was officially abolished, at least, and historically - the republicans were the LIBERALS, and the democrats were the CONSERVATIVES. At least that's they way things were taught, according to my American history books.
On another note . . .
There is ALSO evidence to support the idea that, while slavery OFFICIALLY ended in Lincoln's time, with The Emancipation Proclamation - it didn't ACTUALLY end until the 1940's or 1950's - when southern conservatives stopped having "indentured servants" - most of who were African / American - in the coal mines.
So if THAT is what you are referring to, you may be correct.
I guess it depends on which century slavery was actually abolished.
Posted by David Potter on 12/22/2008 @ 09:43PM PT
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David, Ambers' comment was regarding the Republican Party. I defended them based on their quite defendable record. I could also attack them based on other parts of their record, inabilty to shrink the size of government, over regulation, etc. My point was that we need dialogue in this country. I would actually like to see the libertarian party have far more clout in this country.
Posted by Charlie Reed on 12/23/2008 @ 06:31AM PT
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