Obama's policy on natural resources: disturbingly familiar, almost sinister

Continuity we can believe in on the environment is not what we need.

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair06262009.html

Obama's Used Green Team
Meet the Retreads
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Of all of Barack Obama’s airy platitudes about change none were more vaporous than his platitudes about the environment and within that category Obama has had little at all to say about matters concerning public lands and endangered species. He is, it seems, letting his bureaucratic appointments do his talking for him. So now, five months into his administration, Obama’s policy on natural resources is beginning to take shape. It is a disturbingly familiar shape, almost sinister.

It all started with the man in the hat, Ken Salazar, Obama’s odd pick to head the Department of Interior. Odd because Salazar was largely detested in his own state, Colorado, by environmentalists for his repellent coziness with oil barons, the big ranchers and the water hogs. Odd because Salazar was close friends with the disgraced Alberto Gonzalez, the torturer’s consigliere. Odd because Salazar backed many of the Bush administration’s most rapacious assaults on the environment and environmental laws. Odder still because Salazar, in his new position as guardian of endangered species, had as a senator repeatedly advocated the weakening of the Endangered Species Act.

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From Florida to Louisiana, the encroaching threats on native wildlife are manifest and relentless: chemical pollution, oil drilling, coastal development, clearcutting, wetland destruction and a political animus toward environmental laws (and environmentalists). And Sam Hamilton was not one to stand up against this grim state of affairs.

A detailed examination of Hamilton’s tenure by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility reveals his bleak record. During the period from 2004 through 2006, Hamilton’s office performed 5,974 consultations on development projects (clearcuts, oil wells, golf courses, roads, housing developments and the like) in endangered species habitat. But Hamilton gave the green light to all of these projects, except one. By contrast, during the same period the Rocky Mountain Office of the Fish and Wildlife Service officially consulted on 586 planned projects and issued 100 objections or so-called jeopardy opinions. Hamilton has by far the weakest record of any of his colleagues on endangered species protection.

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Vilsak is a creature of industrial agriculture, a brusque advocate for the corporate titans that have laid waste the farmbelt: Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill. As administrations come and go, these companies only tighten their stranglehold, poisoning the prairies, spreading their clones and frankencrops, sucking up the Oglalla aquifer, scalping topsoil and driving the small farmers under. It could have been different. Obama might have opted for change by selecting Wes Jackson of the Land Institute, food historian Michael Pollan or Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union. Instead he opted for the old guard, a man with a test tube in one hand and Stihl chainsaw in the other.

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One of Tidwell’s highest priorities will, it seems, be turn the national forests into industrial biomass farms, all in the name of green energy. Under this destructive scheme, forests, young and old alike, will be clearcut, not for lumber, but as fuel to be burned in biomass power generators. Already officials in the big timber states of Oregon and Washington are crowing that they will soon be able to become the “Saudi Arabia” of biomass production. Did they run this past Smokey the Bear?

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And was an early red flag that there might be more "business as usual" --especially on public lands/wilderness issues -- than we wanted. Or voted for.

such as putting the likes of Austan Goolsbee and Jason Furman in charge of economic policy, but anyone who had misgivings about these things was denounced as a PUMA and silenced.

:eyes:

:nuke:

over the top criticism. Read some of his hit pieces about Al Gore. That would give readers insight into where Mr. St Claire stands.

point out where this article seems over the top? These guys do seem pretty unsavory. How is St. Clair misleading us? Thanks.

Point out where it's untrue or suck it up.

Hell, this should have at least 50 K&Rs. Salazar...I've watched his voting record since he entered the Senate in '04. Repug Lite. He is just another boy who wants to control and eventually slaughter Mother Nature.

Thank you for posting this article...gives all the names and their history.

Hell, once I heard Geithner and Summers were controlling the $$$, I knew we were fucked.

New boss same as old...but he can speak in sentences and I don't have to look at cheney during State of the Union speeches. And occasionally he throws a bone to me.

WASF. :hi:

Who better to Save the Environment than someone who has spent his life Destroying the Environment.
Sheesh, you Pumas are soooo knee jerk in your hating.


*Chess....a game where The Pawns are sacrificed to protect The Royalty.
Sucks if you are a Pawn.

:eyes:

:eyes:

:rofl:

nt

http://action.defenders.org/site/PageServer?pagename=savewolves_homepage

In Greater Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies
On March 6th, 2009, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved the Bush Administration's discredited plan to eliminate Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in Idaho and Montana -- a decision that could lead to the deaths of more than 1,000 wolves!

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/139823/secretary_of_the_interior_ken_salazar_sets_gray_wolves_up_for_slaughter/

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar Sets Gray Wolves Up for Slaughter
By Suzanne Stone, Defenders of Wildlife. Posted May 5, 2009.

Salazar took a big step backward in the history of wildlife conservation and now has placed the iconic gray wolf in the crosshairs.

On May 4, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar took a big step backwards in the history of wildlife conservation in America. With the stroke of a pen, he moved an iconic native species, the gray wolf, from under the protections of the Endangered Species Act, and placed them squarely in the crosshairs of wolf opponents across the Northern Rockies.

Secretary Salazar's decision to allow the Bush administration's last-minute delisting rule for wolves in the Northern Rockies to take effect risks a tremendous loss for the 30-year legacy of recovering wild wolves in the region.

The rule, effective as of May 4th, allows the majority of the region's estimated 1,600 wolves to be killed, jeopardizing the future of wolves in the Northern Rockies. The rule takes effect even as new pups are being born to wolf packs throughout the region, making them easy targets for those who would wish them harm.

All the reasons why this delisting plan was a bad idea when the Bush administration proposed it in January 2009 still stand today. The rule allows all but 300 of the 1,300 wolves in Idaho and Montana to be killed. It also eliminates protections for wolves in northern Utah and eastern portions of Washington and Oregon.

Idaho, which hosts the area's largest wolf population, has already publically announced plans to kill more than half of its wolf population within the year after federal protections are lifted.

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were two of the biggest disappointments of his cabinte -- truly unbelievable choices. :mad: