An important piece of legislation was introduced into the Senate last week, but you might have missed news of it, what with all the preparations for the Super Bowl. S.2568 was introduced by Senator John Kerry, and then referred to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
S.2568 stands to stop the great Arctic sellout of 2008. Perhaps you haven’t heard about it. The Bush Administration has been required, by law and by court orders, to provide a final decision about whether polar bears are qualified for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Time and time again, the Bush White House has refused to have the Environmental Protection Agency follow the law and provide the required decision.
The government just doesn’t have enough time to work on the issue and get it done by the legally-mandated deadline, they say. Yet, at the same time, the Bush Administration has found ample time to push through a series of decisions that enable big oil corporations to drill for oil and natural gas in the Chukchi Sea, in public waters off the north coast of Alaska. Those waters have been covered by ice for most of the year in the past, but the Arctic ice is melting at an alarming pace now, thanks to global warming. Thus, the polar bears who depend upon the ice in the Chukchi Sea to hunt seals are suffering.
If the government gave the obvious official decision, that polar bears are endangered, that would interfere with oil companies’ plans to drill for oil in the public waters of the Chukchi Sea. So, the Bush Administration has declared that it will provide that decision, all right, but not in January 2008, as the law and the courts required. No, the decision will come later, they say, after the government hands out leases in the Chukchi Sea to Big Oil.
John Kerry’s bill confronts this blatantly illegal act by directly prohibiting any decision to give away the natural resources under the Chukchi Sea until the postponed decision on the status of the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act is provided. Senator Kerry explains, “Before the government sells even more of their habitat off to big corporate interests, we need to know the full impact of further drilling, and we need to know whether this would push us past the tipping point and devastate the polar bear habitat.”
This law doesn’t just defend polar bears. It defends the rule of law in the United States, pushing back against George W. Bush’s assertion that he doesn’t need to pay attention to environmental laws or to the decisions of the Judicial Branch of the federal government. The law also provides a sharp rebuke to corporations who act as if public lands and waters owned by the American people are nothing more than industrial commodities that they have the right to seize and consume at will.
There is no plan for the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to consider Kerry’s bill this week, although it deals with an extremely timely manner – the Chukchi Sea oil and gas leases are set to be assigned in the very near future. You can help change the Senate’s inattention to the bill. Activist opportunity: Call your United States senators (every state has two – find yours here), and urge them to co-sponsor S.2568, and help it move through the Senate quickly so that Bush’s abuse of the law for the sake of big oil can be confronted with a firm legislative hand.
You can also call senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. You see, neither Clinton nor Obama have cosponsored the bill. As much as they talk tough about the corruption of the federal government under Bush and Big Oil, Clinton and Obama have not acted on this issue. It doesn’t have to take more than fifteen minutes out of their busy presidential campaigning. Their Senate aides will do the work, after all. All they have to do is put their names on as cosponsors of S.2568, and they’ll be on the record as taking real action on clean energy, the environment and the rule of law.
As it stands, all that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton can claim on this issue is a lot of empty talk.
Call the Senate offices of Obama and Clinton, and while you’re at it, call their campaigns too.
The number of the congressional telephone switchboard is (202) 224-3121.
The number of the Hillary Clinton for President campaign is (703) 469-2008.
The number of the Barack Obama for President campaign is (866) 675-2008.
