Rick Steiner, marine conservation specialist, professor at the University of Alaska
He has tried to uncover the scientific basis for Palin’s opposition to any new federal protections for polar bears under the Endangered Species Act. When he requested the assessment of state scientists of Alaska who had examined the impact of global warming on polar bears, he was told he might have to pay close to half-a-million dollars for the request to be processed.
Professor Steiner finally obtained the documents through a federal records request and found the state’s marine mammal scientists were actually at odds with Palin’s position. They had agreed with federal researchers’ conclusions that polar bears are threatened with extinction because of a shrinking ice cap.
Alaska—big business here is producing hydrocarbons, and so Alaska is in the business of producing carbon that ultimately winds up into the global atmosphere. So there’s this inherent political tension between the big business in Alaska—oil and gas—and the notion that carbon emissions are causing climate change that’s ground zero impacts right here in Alaska. So there’s that.
Anybody who runs for office in Alaska has to embrace totally the oil and gas business in order to have a chance of getting elected. That’s sort of the politic here. When Governor Palin was running for the governor’s mansion, she supported more oil and gas development and never mentioned a thing about the threat of climate change here in Alaska.
As soon as Palin took office Dirk Kempthorne, the Secretary of the Interior, announced that indeed polar bears were endangered. They were proposing to list them under the Endangered Species Act as threatened. Immediately after that, Governor Palin, then-Governor Palin—this is in December of ’06 or January of ’07—called him and opposed the listing, before they had ever looked at the science.
Subsequent to that, the state’s marine mammal experts looked at the federal proposed rule to list polar bears, sent a nice long memo that basically concluded that, yes, the federal science behind the listing, documenting that polar bears are indeed threatened, was solid science, and they agreed with it.
Later in the year, the USGS, which does most of the research on polar bears, United States Geological Survey, put out nine studies. This was in September of ’07. And again, the state’s marine mammal scientists were asked to comment, to review that science, comment on it. They did, and they found that the conclusions were solid. That was the scientific work that predicted that two-thirds of the world’s polar bears would be gone by mid-century, and all of the polar bears off of Alaska would be gone. And then they had a caveat about that, saying they thought that was a conservative estimate and that it would probably happen faster than that.
Yet the governor maintaining her political position that polar bears are not threatened by anything, and they’re opposing the listing.
This was a situation where the governor made a political decision, not a scientific-based one, to oppose the listing. Secondly, she misrepresented the basis of her decision to the public, saying it was based on science, when indeed it really wasn’t, and then, thirdly, tried to conceal all of that.
Many states have a Freedom of Information Act. In Alaska it’s called the Alaska Public Records Act. And under that act, citizens are entitled to information on what their government is up to, which is a fundamental tenet of democratic governance, certainly.
The governor Palin had written an op-ed in the New York Times a year or so ago, saying that she made her decision to oppose polar bear listing based on a comprehensive review of the science. Rick Steiner like any other environmentalist like to see that document. He started the request in December of ’07. And it took about—the first response he got from the Commissioner of Fish and Game was, it will cost you $468,000 for the governement to process this response.
It took him six months to get to know from the State of Alaska, from the Palin administration. They ultimately got an attorney general’s opinion that they would not release this one document, which was the state science review, claiming that it was a deliberative pre-decisional document and they had executive privilege to do so.
Then he tried in the Fish and Wildlife Service. They had a copy of the document. It’s very clear from that and another email that they accidentally released to Rick Steiner, the state, that the marine mammal scientists agreed completely with the conclusions and the methodologies and the thinking process behind all of the body of federal science that was used to argue for the threatened listing.
The experts of the State of Alaska, agreeing with the experts for the defendant, the US government, that, the science says that polar bears are in serious trouble and that something should be done to afford them additional protection. So whats the purpose of the lawsuit. It didn’t make much sense.
The lawsuit puts the state of Alaska, and particularly the Palin administration, to the political right of the Bush-Cheney administration. Even the Bush administration could not find a way around the science on climate change, Arctic sea ice reduction and polar bear threat. Yet, the Palin administration took the far extreme right position on that and is suing.
Governor Palin is being hailed as a person who took on an oil and gas, increased taxes against the Big Oil in Alaska. It’s this whole issue of “I’m tough on oil.” She has, with the legislature, raised taxes and royalties off the oil companies here. That’s something that people here have wanted and asked for for probably the last decade or so. This was not a new novel proposal. so, they did accomplish that. So there’s more money into the public hands than into corporate hands. And that’s a good thing.
However, she’s very sympathetic with the oil and gas companies on virtually everything. She supports oil and gas drilling in he Arctic National Wildlife Refuge the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea, which are the remaining polar bear habitat in Alaska, fish-rich Bristol Bay, where 27, 28 million sockeye salmon were caught this year and in Cook Inlet, Alaska
The problem with energy, that people knew thirty years ago, is that US is wasting at least half of the oil and gas that US is producing and using in their phenomenally inefficient energy economy.
What actually need to do is a rapid transition to a sustainable energy economy. We know exactly how to do that, with energy efficiency subsidies, and remove the subsidies from oil and gas and nuclear and things like that, and then providing subsidies and tax breaks for alternatives. We know how to do this.
By picking Palin for Whitehouse, it’s very obvious their entire energy policy is going to be drill, drill, drill rather than transitioning to the sustainable economy that people know they need.
The notion of government transparency and honesty and ethics and things like that are verbs, not as nouns. You have to be transparent and not just declare that you are transparent and honest. You have to be it every morning that you wake up and start governing.
Discussion with Rick Steiner, professor of the University of Alaska, Anchorage, marine conservation specialist by Amy Goodman.
– from Democracy Now
This quote from African environmentalist Baba Dioum says it all: “In the end, we will only conserve what we love. We will only love what we understand. We will only understand what we are taught.”
She doesn’t understand the effects the drilling will have on the environment and in turn how that will increase the cost/quality of Alaska’s natural goods. Every time I listen to her I find myself saying, “Yeah, but…” after each statement. More drilling may equal more immediate revenue, but what she doesn’t understand is that is also equals more environmental hazards, more health issues, higher reliance on health insurance and thus higher premiums; less salmon, less bears, less tourism and the list goes on.
This article appears to me to be completely at odds with the Canadian Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife which says the polar bear is “just one step up from ‘fine and dandy’”
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2008/04/polar_bear_not_endangered_just.html
how can we conclude that Polar Bear is ’fine and dandy’ ? And fine and dandy’ for how many years? What will be going to happen after some time. There is no reduction in greenhouse gas emission, There is no action to move sustainable life style. Still most of the people are ignoring the realities scientists are environmentalist saying for decades.
Polar bears are a symbol of global warming, which is human made. On north some floating ice is there and some creatures are living on it. Ice is melting, their home is eroding, They are going to be drowned. This is the symbol. What will you do if it happens to you? The issue is more visible in the case of polar bear now. After some time, we will get more troubled examples like animals burned burned skin etc.
Nobody with scientific background could say that save only Polar Bear. And environmentalists are not getting any bribe from polar bear. But politicians, bureaucrats and media getting bribe from carbon economy. Thats why they are pushing it.
It is not important whether the US, most polluting people of the world, including a creature in a golden endangered species list or not. Actually except a few rich people rest of all living this this planet are in the threat of extinction. And all these are because of their greedy, selfish, luxurious, ignorant, irresponsible lifestyle.
The article is about how powerful people are manipulating science to push carbon economy.
thanks for the link.