Investigative journalism from the Cascadia Bioregion
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Drill, Baby, Drill
All the easy places on Earth to find oil have been explored. The most fragile environments have been left for last.
There's no place more challenging for oil exploration than the Arctic Ocean's continental shelf. Companies have drilled virtually every other likely deposit on Earth, but the expense, frigid weather and the lack of technology have kept them away.
Until now.
The USGS says the Arctic is “the largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum remaining on Earth,” and may hold a quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.
When politicians in the United States, panicked by skyrocketing gasoline prices, chanted “drill, baby, drill,” during the 2008 presidential election, they were talking about going after places like this.
But these politicians could have given more thought to the highly stressed polar bears, walruses and other wildlife in the Arctic, many of which already are facing increased difficulties due to the effects of global warming.
Arctic melting, triggered by global warming, is forcing polar bears to abandon denning areas on the sea ice and move closer to existing oil development on or near the shore, and likely has been a factor in the deaths of bears from starvation, drowning and cannibalism. Global warming also played a critical role in the deaths of thousands of walruses during 2007.
The Bush administration nevertheless offered almost all polar bear and walrus habitat off Alaska in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas for lease to oil companies. In February 2008, seven corporations thought so highly of the potential for oil and gas that they bid a record sum of $3.4 billion for the right to explore 2.76 million acres in the Chukchi.
With every step in Big Oil's oncoming invasion, the stress on wildlife is likely to grow.
Oil development will bring all the pollution, noise and human intrusion normally associated with industrialization to this frozen circumpolar wilderness. It will mean increased shipping traffic and likely fuel, oil and other spills from tankers, ice breakers, supply vessels, oil rigs, pipelines and liquid natural gas ports.
USGS biologist Steven C. Amstrup, one of the world's leading polar bear experts, says the impacts of oil development on Arctic wildlife remains uncertain. “The most significant of these probably are related to possible spills of oil or other chemicals and the exposure of bears and other marine organisms to those substances,” he told Cascadia Times.
“Studies related to those topics in the areas of the new offshore leases have not been conducted,” Amstrup said.
“Here's the area most impacted by climate change, and the Bush Administration response was to provide no management, zoning or protection — they basically zoned the whole thing 'industrial’,” says Whit Sheard of Pacific Environment. “The fact that there is no management plan or zoning would be unacceptable anywhere else in the U.S., even without the fact that it's being hit hardest of anywhere by climate change.”
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Reinventing what it means to be Inuit: Indigenous peoples adapt to climate change
By Paul Koberstien
Inuit leader Jose A. Kusugak said that to address the impacts of climate change, it makes sense to consult with those most affected: the indigenous peoples who live in the Arctic.
“Our millennia-old traditions are already being altered because of the warming Arctic, and we face the possibility of having to completely reinvent what it means to be Inuit. This is the prospect that we fear,” he was quoted as saying in an 2005 Inuit publication, Unikkaaqatigiit:Putting the Human Face on Climate Change.
About four million people live in the Arctic. Indigenous peoples include the Inupiat of Alaska, the Inuit of Canada, Greenland and Russia; the Saami of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia; the Athabascan of Alaska and Canada; the Aleut of Alaska and Russia; and numerous other groups as shown on the map here (pdf).
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Arctic Meltdown
By Paul Koberstien
Dramatic climate changes in the Arctic are sending an unmistakable signal that global warming is advancing much more rapidly on Earth than scientists thought. Many now say that the time to deal with the crisis is rapidly running short.
The Arctic, which plays a vital role in keeping the Earth cool, is having trouble keeping its own cool. Scientists have assembled a mountain of incontrovertible evidence that warming is fundamentally, rapidly changing the Arctic, none clearer than the retreat of its late-summer sea ice, triggered by air temperatures that have been rising at twice the rate as the rest of the planet. And the retreat is accelerating.
Until recently, climate models published by the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have predicted a complete retreat of the late- summer sea ice by the end of this century. But the IPCC’s models may need drastic revision, as a number of scientists now think the ice could disappear as soon as the next decade. Species that depend on the ice for their subsistence and survival — including humans, polar bears, walruses and ice seals — are facing significant disruptions in their lives.
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The owl’s stunning reprieve
Citizens stand up to Bush in defense of ancient forests
By Paul Koberstein
History is certain to judge the Bush years as a disaster for the nation's — and the planet's — environment. But as his second term winds down, it's worth noting that ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest are still standing, despite the administration's vigorous efforts to help timber companies cut them down, and thanks to countless citizens who stood in the way.
The administration's approach to nature has been driven by two myths: what's good for industry is good for the environment, and the extent of our resources is without limit. But there is much work to do. For the last eight years, Bush has been at war with the planet's complex and fragile life-sustaining systems in his rush to aid industry.
Aside from a last-gasp attempt to gut the house on his way out, Bush has lost his war on the environment. Witness the fact that the ancient forests are still standing, despite almost eight years of concerted efforts to liquidate them. A broad campaign to suppress science and intimidate scientists has been exposed, and administration officials have been forced to reverse several unlawful decisions. Many more decisions are under investigation by Congress, the courts and independent government watchdogs. The clock will soon run out, leaving behind a mangled mess that the next president should be able to fix ..
However, if the next president wants to avoid lasting damage, he must get on this right way, and he must do more than just dispel myths. He must also weed out Bush’s true believers from the bureaucracy, and identify language now embedded in rules and regulations that would undermine conservation — and delete it.
The next president must also contemplate how to restore wildlife and ecosystems damaged by Bush's assault and neglect, and avoid the catastrophic climate disruptions that he failed to address.
Bush was stopped by combatants whom the administration considered to be enemies. Citizens, communities, conservationists and scientists all helped to deliver a final, crushing blow.
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The fallen lieutenant
Disgraced ex-Interior official Julie MacDonald ran broad
scheme to suppress science
In Bush's war against the environment, Julie MacDonald, a deputy assistant Interior secretary, cast herself as the loyal lieutenant who led his fierce campaign to blunt efforts to recover imperiled species in favor of more grazing, timber production and fossil fuel extraction across the country.
The manipulation and suppression of science “is rampant” throughout the process of listing and recovering endangered species, said Dr. Francesca T. Grifo, senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, at a congressional hearing in May 2008.
Bush allowed political appointees “to interfere with individual species decisions and propagate policies that reduce the role of science in endangered species decision making,” Grifo said.
MacDonald worked at Interior from 2002 to 2007, and during that time some 200 listing, delisting and critical habitat rules came across her desk. As a deputy assistant secretary at Interior, she oversaw fish, wildlife and parks, focusing on implementing Endangered Species Act, which requires agencies to base decisions on the “best available science.” As we’ll see, MacDonald often employed the “worst available politics” as her standard.
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Truth and other casualties from the war on science
Where political meddling is routine,
and scientific integrity is discouraged,
how can you tell what to believe?
Julie MacDonald's shocking behavior creates a credibility problem for federal environmental agencies, and raises significant questions for the public. Who would believe anything that's been tainted with MacDonald's fingerprints? Who else has poisoned the science with politics? How can you tell what to believe?
No one understands this credibility gap better than the scientists who work for the government. The Bush administration seems, however, to be in denial. When asked about overwhelmingly negative comments in a recent survey scientists who for the EPA, agency spokesman Jonathan Shradar attributed some of the discontent to the “passion” scientists have toward their work, CNN reported. He dismissed the scientists' concern about the EPA's lack of scientific integrity.
More than half of 1,586 EPA staff scientists who responded online to a 44-question online survey reported they had experienced incidents of political interference in their work in the last five years, according to a Union of Concerned Scientists survey released in April 2008.
In the last three years, the Union of Concerned Scientists has surveyed three environmental agencies about questions of political inference and scientific integrity, including the EPA, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service (part of the Department of Commerce) were the others. It has also surveyed federal climate scientists who work for a variety of agencies, including NOAA and NASA. Two other non-profit groups participated in the survey, the Government Accountability Project and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
By law, the work of all these agencies is supposed to be fueled by science, but under Bush, politicians have interfered to an alarming degree, according to detailed accounts provided to Congress.
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Fixing Bush’s Mangled Mess
100 things President Obama can do right away
By Paul Koberstein
It is said there are no permanent victories in the war to save the planet, only temporary reprieves and permanent losses.
Put it this way: You can clearcut the forest only once. Species that go extinct don’t come back.
That is why conservation scientists warn us to err on the side of caution whenever we make a decision with significant impacts, and to embrace what they call the “precautionary principle.”
The precautionary principle means, according to the internationally recognized “Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle:”
“When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.
“The process of applying the Precautionary Principle must be open, informed and democratic and must include potentially affected parties.”
The Bush administration did the opposite, playing a game of Russian roulette with nature. The administration hid or changed facts, acted in closed, secretive ways, and included only corporate interests in its decision-making process.
Here are 100 things President Obama can do right now (some of which will require cooperation from Congress):
1) Obama should appoint, as a member of his Cabinet, a chief science advisor who, among other things, must ensure the scientific integrity of his administration as well as iunderstand and implement the Precautionary Principle.
2) Second, he should reverse every environmental decision made under Bush that violates this principle. A review of every significant environmental action taken during the last eight years is in order.
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