The corrupt and illegal decision by the Bush White House to delay Endangered Species Act designation for the polar bear until after the lease of oil and gas drilling rights in the Chukchi Sea, prime polar bear habitat, is not just a tragedy for the polar bear. It also reflects the tragedy of a government designed to work against itself, creating gridlock that threatens the integrity of American lands and the health of the American people, in order to promote the financial interests of a few large corporations.
Consider the Department of the Interior. Jamie Rappaport Clark knows it well. She is the former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a division of the Department of the Interior. Unfortunately, the same Department of the Interior that is charged with the duty of protecting American wildlife is also given the task of helping corporations exploit natural resources. Discussing this internal conflict in testimony before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming last month, Clark commented,
There is a tragic irony to this discussion today to assess both the urgent importance of the proposal pending in the Department of the Interior to take action to prevent the extinction of the polar bear and the simultaneous proposal by the Minerals Management Service in the same Interior Department to open to large-scale offshore oil and gas operations nearly 30 million acres of core habitat critical to the survival of polar bears. There is something dreadfully wrong with this picture.
On the one hand, it has to be abundantly clear to the Interior Department that global warming due to human activities threatens the survival of well documented, dwindling numbers of polar bears, and yet they are irresponsibly dragging their feet on listing polar
bears as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.. On the other hand, the same Department is now irresponsibly and unnecessarily rushing forward to sell oil and gas leases in the Chukchi Sea, in the heart of critically important and essential polar bear habitat.
Clark is spot on in her structural critique of the the Department of the Interior. Americans cannot count on the Interior Department to protect the natural resources that they own in common. In 2009, when George W. Bush is finally escorted out of the White House, one of the first items on the new President’s agenda should be the establishment of a Department of the Environment, with an unambiguous mission of protecting the natural environment within the borders of the United States from powerful corporations that seek to buy influence over the federal government.
I don’t agree. I think that should already be the job of the Interior — rather than their corporate liason job being “the task of helping corporations exploit natural resources” it should be to regulate and limit the exploitation; to make onyl the necessary concessions. they should not be at all concerned with corporate bottom lines, as that isn’t government’s job.
setting up a new department gives legitimacy to the idea that the current department should be working for the corpos. and it jsut moves the problem up a level, such that two departments are in conflict.
The FDA, the EPA, and now the Dept. of the Interior – all work AGAINST the very reasons they were founded! There are even more agencies that don’t work like they’re supposed to, Congress doesn’t do it’s job, and we all are suffering because our government doesn’t work. WHY DO WE PUT UP WITH IT?? i’ve been wondering this since 2004, but the lame American electorate and the spineless Congress don’t seem to care about the future. Their only interest seems to be lining their pockets before retiring to become corporate lobbyists.
What a mockery of democracy we’ve become. Capitalism is killing us.