This is one to file under "People who haven't a clue". CNN is reporting that the US Interior Department will list polar bears as a "threatened" species.I love polar bears. Not only are they cute, but they eat people, too. It's win-win all around. But what caught my eye about the polar bear story is that "Environmentalists hope that invoking the Endangered Species Act protections eventually might provide impetus for the government to cut back on its emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping 'greenhouse' gases that are warming the atmosphere." The story quotes Kassie Siegel, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, as saying, "This is a victory for the polar bear, and all wildlife threatened by global warming. There is still time to save polar bears but we must reduce greenhouse gas pollution immediately."
I've got news for you all: the Endangered Species Act has never been used as an impetus for massive social and economic change, and it never will be. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will require very real changes that will effect the lives (and pocketbooks) of every American. A lawsuit by an environmental group asking the courts to force the government to protect polar bears by, for example, mandating strict new standards for cars, powerplants, beef consumption, etc. is a sure way to see the Endangered Species Act repealed or seriously watered-down.
Even if Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House.
5 comments:
Actually the Endangered Species Act (and other environmental laws to a lesser degree) is very commonly an "impetus for massive social and economic change." Check out what has happened to multi-billion dollar logging, ranching, energy/dam, and gill-net fishing industries in the western states. Regarding the potential for a lawsuit over car emissions, the Center for Biological Diversity has already filed it. Joined by the states of MA, NY, VA and many other state and local governments, the case is now before the supreme court. Called "Massachusetts v. EPA" the garnered huge national press a few weeks ago.
And consider the civil rights and pro-choice movements. Legal action has always been a crucial part of social change movements.
The Center for Biological Diversity's petition and suit to list the polar bear as an endangered species has catapulted the polar bear onto the front page of the Time Magazine, Washington Post, New York Times and USA Today. The legal campaign has played a significant part in ramping up public awareness of global warming.
So has the Center's suits over the Bush administration's suppression of government global warming studies. Litigation and legal maneuvering are important tools to movements seeking massive social and economic change.
I disagree, and I believe the examples you give support my position. Logging, ranching, dams and fishing each have relatively minor impacts on the average American's income. ("Multi-billion dollar industries" are just a drop in the bucket for a $12 trillion economy.) And even then, when environmental group lawsuits in the past have threatened jobs over spotted owls and snail darters, the end result was a Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, the "Contract with America", the "Wise Use" movement and new laws mandating that all environmental regulations involve a cost-benefit analysis. If you don't think there was a connection, then you just weren't paying attention.
In addition, the civil rights and pro-choice movements are both spurious analogies and analogies that cut my way. First, they involve the rights of actual people -- which is something far easier to gain public support for than polar bears. And, except for some labor groups vis-a-vis civil rights, these earlier movements did not involve economic matters. It's far easier to convince voters that a given policy is wrong when their own incomes aren't effected by the proposed change. Second, both Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade involved Constitutional issues. The ESA does not and can be changed by Congress at will. Third, and most significantly, as many legal scholars have pointed out, both Brown and Roe were decided after the tide of public opinion had already shifted on the relevant issue. Despite conventional wisdom, the courts were following social change, not leading it. (Cass Sunstein in particular has written on this.)
Yet, even so, the fact that the direct impetus for the legal change came about by the courts has lead to decades of debate and the crystalization of the social conservative movement -- a group that believes they have had their democratic rights trampled by the courts. There are quite a few liberals who believe that this movement would never have gotten off the ground had the abortion issue, in particular, been resolved through elections (the direction it was heading in at any rate).
So my point is: the courts are not going to order that any changes to US environmental policy that would have any real impact on global warming. (Besides, do you know how significant a change it would take to actually have an impact? I'm guessing from your posts that you don't.) And if the courts did do something so silly, Congress would change the law very quickly -- particularly since the Democrats don't want to do anything that might jeopardize their chances of winning the presidency in 2008. If you think otherwise, you need to lay off the hemp.
I want to catapult a bear.
Let me tell you, when you catapult a polar bear onto a magazine, you had better have been finished reading it.
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