May 2008

Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne on Wednesday announced that he had decided to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.  He also announced that the regulatory reach of the listing would be limited by invoking exemptions under section 4(d) so that it could not be used to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The Pacific Legal Foundation immediately announced that they would file suit to block the listing.  Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council immediately sent out action alerts and fundraising appeals announcing that the listing was just the first step.  Now they would have to sue to overturn the 4(d) limits, so that the listing could be used to stop oil and gas exploration and production in the Arctic and to challenge the construction of new emitting sources, such as coal or gas-fired power plants.

My view, and also that of Senator James Inhofe (R-Ok.), is that the decision is based on junk science—specifically, computer models that predict increased summer melting of the Arctic Ocean ice sheet.  It has been shown empirically that these models lack predictive capability.  The Department of the Interior should have applied the minimal standards required by the Federal Data Quality Act to disregard the model predictions.

Although the tide is turning against energy-rationing policies in the U. S. Senate (and in the European Union, especially in Britain), Senator John McCain (R-Az.) is staying true to the old religion in his presidential campaign.  He laid out his global warming policies in a speech at a Danish company’s wind turbine factory in Portland, Oregon on Monday.  McCain used the venue to say that, “When we debate energy bills in Washington, it should be more than a competition among industries for special favors, subsidies, and tax breaks.  In the Congress, we need to send the special interests on their way….”  The Energy Information Administration reported that wind power receives federal subsidies of $23.37 per megawatt hour of electricity produced.  Coal gets 44 cents and natural gas 25 cents. However, the subsidies provided to wind and solar power are not enough to make them competitive without state and renewable mandates.