anti-environmentalist // Current

The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin IV: Endangered Species

On the question of extending the Endangered Species Act to polar bears, Sarah Palin hews to the Stephen Colbert position. And in... more

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Calls rise among Republicans for Sarah Palin to step down from GOP ticket

As the economy worsens, so does Palin in the eyes of fellow Republicans... Sarah Palin faces the biggest test of her month-old... more

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Palin receives Rubber Dodo award from Centre for Biological Diversity |

Sarah Palin may have seen the light - sort of - on climate change but that did not spare her from being singled out yesterday as... more

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Palin's barbaric record on killing America's 'protected' wildlife

We’re getting the word out to voters about Governor Sarah Palin’s barbaric record on killing America’s wildlife,... more

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Defenders of Wildlife Endorses Obama-Biden: Release of 1st TV Ad on Palin's Environmental Record

For TV ad Defenders Action Fund's 2008 endorsement: www.defendersactionfund.org

McCain-Palin campaign studiously avoids most environmental issues and offers energy proposals based largely on Big Oil's wish list, the Obama-Biden campaign is offering solid positions in nearly every environmental area, including forward-looking energy solutions.

Defenders Action Fund underscored its endorsement by launching a new TV ad about Palin's environmental record, focusing on her support for the aerial hunting of wolves, a cruel practice she actively champions in Alaska. The program licenses private citizens to fly airplanes and shoot wolves from the air or chase them to exhaustion before landing and shooting them point blank. The gunners then sell the pelts of the animals they kill for profit. The program also targets grizzly and black bears, which are chased by air and then shot on the ground. The ad, which will air in presidential swing states, shows a new and extreme side to the Governor, which has yet to be fully explored in the media.
"Sarah Palin not only condones the aerial hunting of wolves and bears, she actively promotes it," continued Schlickeisen. "She has even gone so far as to propose a bounty of $150 for every severed left foreleg of a wolf the hunters can produce. Her promotion of this ghastly and unscientific program - which she pursues while simultaneously suing the federal government to eliminate protections for the imperiled polar bear - offers voters a glimpse of her values and character that is quite different from the picture carefully crafted by the McCain-Palin campaign's professional speechwriters. It should also provide voters with a good idea of what a McCain-Palin administration's approach to stewardship of our nation's natural resources would be like. Americans deserve to know about this real side of Sarah Palin before they make up their minds about her.
"Put simply, if voters care at all about the environment, about protecting our air, land, water and wildlife for future generations, then they should look past the misleading rhetoric of the McCain-Palin campaign and support Obama-Biden," concluded Schlickeisen. For TV ad Defenders Action Fund's 2008 endorsement: www.defendersactionfund.org McCain-Palin campaign studiously avoids... more

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3 months ago

IWC issues media blackout on discussions to lift whaling ban

The fate of the ban on whale hunting to be decided behind closed doors.
The survival of whales is perhaps the most successful conservation story of the 20th century. Since a moratorium on commercial hunting, some whale species have staged dramatic recoveries. In May it was announced that the humpback whale population has climbed from 1,500 to 20,000 individuals, resulting in it being "downlisted" from vulnerable to least concern, according to the IUCN's Red List. Others, like the blue whale, appear to have stable populations but recovery remains slow.
The moratorium on hunting, begun in 1982, was the decisive moment for whale conservation. Next week, the fate of that moratorium will be decided by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). In St. Petersburg, Florida twenty-six of the eighty nations making up the IWC will gather under a media-blackout to discuss the continuance of the commercial hunting ban on whales.
"These closed-door meetings pose a grave risk to the future of the IWC and the whales it was established to protect," said Patrick R. Ramage, Global Whale Program Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). "Whales face more threats today than at any time in history and Americans from sea to shining sea want to see them protected. The last thing we need is a secret deal to re-open whaling.”
Despite the moratorium a few nations continue commercial whaling. Both Iceland and Japan partake in annual hunts, stating that their whaling is only conducted for scientific purposes. Many conservationists, however, believe that scientific whaling is just a cover for commercial whaling. Japan remains the world’s largest consumer of whale products and meat is widely available in grocery stores, restaurants, and even children’s school lunches. Norway also actively participates in commercial whaling...
Whale populations still face a variety of threats, even without commercial hunting, such as collisions with ships, pollution, by-catch, seismic testing for oil, the use of sonar, and climate change. --
--Many of the twenty-six nations attending the meeting in St. Petersburg are suspected of being aligned with Japan and Iceland in their desire to lift the ban on whaling. In an op-ed piece, Ramage states that he believes the Bush administration is preparing to allow the ban to be lifted in order to placate Japan. The IWC chairman, William Hogarth, is a Bush administration appointee.
Ramage says that Hogarth, “should either open up the process for scrutiny, or simply cancel the meetings."

The fate of the ban on whale hunting to be decided behind closed doors. The survival of whales is perhaps the most successful... more

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3 months ago

Our Polar Bears, Ourselves...OUR FUTURE

It wasn't much noticed at the time, but three weeks before she was chosen as John McCain's vice presidential running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin played a key supporting role in the latest episode of the Bush Administration's eight-year war on the Endangered Species Act, one of the cornerstones of American environmental law. On August 4 Alaska sued the government for listing the polar bear as a "threatened" species, an action, the lawsuit asserted, that would harm "oil and gas...development" in the state. In an accompanying statement, Palin complained that the listing "was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available" and should be rescinded.

The Bush Administration had not wanted to designate the polar bear as threatened in the first place; now Palin's lawsuit provided cover to backtrack on the decision. The Interior Department had issued the listing only after environmental groups filed two lawsuits, and the courts ordered compliance. While the polar bear population was currently stable, the plaintiffs argued, greenhouse gas emissions were melting the Arctic ice that polar bears rely on to hunt seals, their main food source. A study by the US Geological Survey supported this argument, concluding that two-thirds of all polar bears could be gone by 2050 if Arctic ice continues to melt as scientists project. The listing was the first time global warming had been cited as the sole premise in an Endangered Species Act case, and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne clearly wanted it to be the last. When Kempthorne announced the polar bear listing on May 14, he emphasized that it would not affect federal policy on global warming or block development of "our natural resources in the Arctic."

A week after Palin's lawsuit, Kempthorne delivered on that pledge. On August 11 he proposed new rules that could allow federal agencies to decide for themselves whether their actions will imperil a threatened or endangered species. The rule reverses precedent: since passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, scientists from the Fish and Wildlife Service have made such determinations independent of the agency involved. Under the new rule, if the Army Corps of Engineers is building a dam, the corps can decide whether it is putting species at risk. To make sure no one missed the point, Kempthorne told reporters that the new rule, which he termed "a narrow regulatory change," would keep the Endangered Species Act from becoming "a back door" to making climate change policy.

Kempthorne's proposal nevertheless seems likely to go forward. An obligatory thirty-day period for public comment expires September 15, after which Interior can begin to implement the rule. Congress could block funding, but few expect that to happen. Lawsuits are certain to follow, but critics say the quickest solution would be for the next administration to withdraw the rule. Barack Obama seems likely to do that; he immediately condemned Kempthorne's proposal. John McCain was silent. But his choice of Palin--who does not believe global warming is caused by humans but does think it's acceptable for humans to gun down wolves from airplanes--suggests that Arctic creatures have much to fear from a McCain administration.

FOR THE REST OF THIS REPORT, PLEASE VISIT: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080929/hertsgaardIt wasn't much noticed at the time, but three weeks before she was chosen as John McCain's vice presidential running... more

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3 months ago

Pensito Review » Palin Cut Funding for Alaska’s Special Needs Children by 60 Percent

At her speech before the Republican National Convention, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made this heartfelt-seeming claim, via CBS News... more

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3 months ago

Alaskan leaders say they weren’t contacted : National : The Buffalo News

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — John McCain’s presidential campaign did not talk with the Alaska House speaker and other... more

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3 months ago

Who is the Handler? (Palin's, of course)

Sarah Palin's small-town-girl-takes-on-Washington act is a brilliant success, for today anyway. But anytime political parties bring their aw-shucks, folksy Gomer Pyles out in front of the klieg lights, it's time to suspend disbelief. And that's especially true when the Republicans, party of corporate America and Big Oil, are casting the show.

Yes, Governor Palin was born and raised in a town called Wasilla, hunts caribou, married "her guy" from high school who races, in her words, "snow machines" (when did they graduate from being snow-mobiles?) and apparently knows how to load and shoot a gun. She also really is a mother, a mother of a hockey player too, and a member of the PTA.

However, one need only check out Jim Yardley's enlightening reportage from Wasilla in yesterday's New York Times to smell the rat. Sarah Palin is no average Jane, much as she looks and sounds like one. On the contrary, Sarah Palin's entry into politics and subsequent rise has all the hallmarks of having been engineered, coached and groomed by bigger outside forces with a bigger plan.

Her first election to mayor in 1996 was based on "wedge Issues" - abortion, gun control, and proof of hard-core religiosity - issues that had never been discussed before in the town of 7,000, where politicians had run on where they stood on bingo revenue and fixing muddy roads.

Listen to the shell-shocked fellow she beat in that first election, the three term incumbent Mayor of Wasilla, John C. Stein. "Sarah comes in with all this ideological stuff, and I was like, 'Whoa. But that got her elected: abortion, gun rights, term limits and the religious born-again thing. I'm not a churchgoing guy, and that was another issue: 'We will have our first Christian mayor.'"

There was a time when America's small town governments were about local civics and its churches really were mainly about spirituality. That quaint era vanished, within living memory, with the rise of the "Christian right" which literally infected mainstream American Christianity with hateful brochures about gays, guns, and abortion.

For the rest of this story & more on Palin, please visit:
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2008/09/will-palins-anti-environment-stance-be.htmlSarah Palin's small-town-girl-takes-on-Washington act is a brilliant success, for today anyway. But anytime political parties... more