Global warming will lead to declining polar bear populations, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar acknowledged Friday, but the Interior Department will let stand a Bush administration rule that proposes to manage the threatened animals without taking into account greenhouse gases that heat the planet and threaten their sea ice habitat.
Salazar announced Friday that he'll keep in place the Bush administration rule limiting government scientists from looking at anything other than the Alaska habitat of polar bears as they develop wildlife management plans.
Environmentalists had sought a change to the rule, which effectively limited federal regulators from considering the effects of greenhouse gas emissions as they worked to address the bears' loss of habitat in Alaska.
The rule was announced last May when former Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne determined that under the Endangered Species Act, the bears are threatened. However, Kempthorne warned at the time that the Bush administration didn't want polar bears to be used as a "back door" for setting climate-change policy and issued the rule to keep greenhouse gas emissions from consideration.
On Friday, President Barack Obama's Interior Department reluctantly agreed with the Bush administration, saying it's scientifically impossible to use the Endangered Species Act to regulate the greenhouse gases that contribute to the destruction of the bears' habitat. The emissions from a cement plant in Georgia, for example, can't be tied directly to the precipitous decline of sea ice, Salazar said.
http://www.kansascity.com/444/story/1186612.html
Do you hear that popping sound, that's from liberals heads exploding over this.
Salazar announced Friday that he'll keep in place the Bush administration rule limiting government scientists from looking at anything other than the Alaska habitat of polar bears as they develop wildlife management plans.
Environmentalists had sought a change to the rule, which effectively limited federal regulators from considering the effects of greenhouse gas emissions as they worked to address the bears' loss of habitat in Alaska.
The rule was announced last May when former Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne determined that under the Endangered Species Act, the bears are threatened. However, Kempthorne warned at the time that the Bush administration didn't want polar bears to be used as a "back door" for setting climate-change policy and issued the rule to keep greenhouse gas emissions from consideration.
On Friday, President Barack Obama's Interior Department reluctantly agreed with the Bush administration, saying it's scientifically impossible to use the Endangered Species Act to regulate the greenhouse gases that contribute to the destruction of the bears' habitat. The emissions from a cement plant in Georgia, for example, can't be tied directly to the precipitous decline of sea ice, Salazar said.
http://www.kansascity.com/444/story/1186612.html
Do you hear that popping sound, that's from liberals heads exploding over this.
