President Obama has made another huge concession to developers and drillers this week. He has abandoned a pledge to restore eligibility for federal wilderness protection to millions of acres of undeveloped land in the West. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who was himself viewed as a decidedly anti-environmental Senator before being picked by Obama, announced that millions of acres will no longer be designated as “wild lands.”
As with civil libertarians, environmentalists have long been dismissed by the White House as having no where to go in the next election. Accordingly, Obama continues to rollback on environmental protections such as his radical expansion of coal permits as well as his opening up of pristine areas of the East Coast to oil exploration.
The effort to protect the lands was blocked by Congress but environmentalists wanted the Administration to fight on this ground. Various business groups and conservative members of Congress heralded the President’s move. At risk are some of the most pristine untouched lands left in the country.
Source: Yahoo
husbandry \ˈhəz-bən-drē\, n.,
2: the control or judicious use of resources
Compare with . . .
exploit \ik-ˈsplȯit, ˈek-ˌ\, v.,
1: to make productive use of : utilize
2: to make use of meanly or unfairly for one’s own advantage
Contrast with . . .
greed \ˈgrēd\, n.,
: a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed
Emphasize with . . .
narcissism \ˈnär-sə-ˌsi-zəm\, n.,
1: egoism, egocentrism
Condense via utilization . . .
The greedy and narcissistic elements of society cannot distinguish between responsible husbandry and venal myopic exploitation.
so never drill or mine or timber on American soil again? How are you going to sustain an economy?
Roco don’t forget never shoot feral pigs from helicopters, or was that wolves ?
frank:
so never drill or mine or timber on American soil again? How are you going to sustain an economy?
Roco – why would the Japanese buy material from the US when they can get it from China and South America cheaper? Since the foolish American workers demand 7 or 8 dollars an hour and lavish benefits like partially paid health insurance and 2 weeks vacation time we will never be able to compete in that market.
But we are getting there. If this President doesn’t completely undo health and safety requirements while undoing the environmental ones they next one surely will. Then we can create the sort of workers paradise the Chinese have.
We can all march to the glorious Foxconn factory secure in the knowledge that, if we forget our sworn statement that we will not commit suicide, the nets the Masters Of the Universe have put up around the plant will prevent us from jumping to our death. Meanwhile our children can die from black lung by simply breathing the city air.
PS: Obama is really a nightmare, but he is brilliant in that he knows we are stuck with him.
I just hope Michelle divorces him someday and runs for president.
Dear Jonathan Turley,
Why are you no longer a contibuting talking head on MSNBC? They need you over there! Comcast is beginning to work its corporate magic on the “last liberal news outlet”, if it ever really was that, and it is now fading away.
Very smart of them not to fire the anchors all at once (kind of like the Chamber of Commerce going slow the first year after Citizen’s United, huh?)… That way they don’t attract too much attention and criticism. As to the contributors like you, I noticed Jane from Firedog Lake is gone too. And the Huffington Post little feisty guy. Now it’s just triangulators like Howard Fineman and Alter hanging out with dopey Chris Matthews (who is a little schizo, if you ask me).
sad… I keep wishing that rich liberals like George Soros would put their money into real truth media. Wouldn’t you like to see an HNN (“Hound News Network”) to go after the Fox?
PS: Is it possible to recall a Supreme?
sounds more like we’re eating our seed corn.
Mr. Obama has inspired me to paraphrase the first stanza of a famous sonnet:
How do I loathe thee
I caint begin to count the ways…
Good for the president. I think he is finally getting the idea that it takes using natural resources to create jobs.
This will create thousands of jobs. Lots of natural resources can be sold to Japan to help them rebuild.
He needs to continue, we start drilling and mining and cutting maybe we can put people back to work.
The economy must really stink for him to be willing to spend some political capital. Although if he puts people to work the small number of greenies he loses will be more than offset by the number of working people who will vote for him.
This was a purely political move on his part but credit is due, at least he has the stones to take the heat. Although it may just be a head faint to get re-elected and then back to trashing the economy and sharing the wealth; business as usual with this administration.
This puts conservatives in a pickle, they don’t want another Obama presidency but do they want another great depression?
Once he starts doing these things and the economy starts turning around will he be able to move his agenda forward or has he painted himself into a corner? He cant heat the economy up and then tack to the statist quo without a good deal of push back from republicans. He has the makings of a compromise if he can put people back to work and get the economy moving again.
If he can he will probably marginalize the Tea Party in 2012 and most old guard republicans are willing to fall all over themselves to pass new entitlements so this could be the start of a good opportunity for the president.
Oh, and here in the U.S.
Carbon Trade Ends on Quiet Death of Chicago Climate Exchange
November 8, 2010
By John O’Sullivan
Republican mid-term election joy deals financial uncertainty among green investors as the Chicago Climate Exchange announces the end of U.S. carbon trading.
The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) announced on October 21, 2010 that it will cease carbon trading this year. However, Steve Milloy reporting on Pajamasmedia.com (November 6, 2010) finds this huge story strangely unreported by the mainstream media.
To some key analysts the collapse of the CCX appears to show that international carbon trading is “dying a quiet death.” Yet Milloy finds that such a major business failure has drawn no interest at all from the mainstream media. Milloy noted that a “Nexis search conducted a week after CCX’s announcement revealed no news articles published about its demise.”
Not until November 02, 2010 had the story even been picked up briefly and that was by Chicagobusiness.com (Crain’s). Reporter, Paul Merrion appeared to find some comfort that while CCX will cease all trading of new emission allowances at the end of the year, “it will continue trading carbon offsets generated by projects that consume greenhouse gases, such as planting trees.”
Collapse is Personal Setback for U.S. President
Barack Obama was a board member of the Joyce Foundation that funded the fledgling CCX. Professor Richard Sandor, of Northwestern University had started the business with $1.1 million in grants from the Chicago-based left-wing Joyce Foundation enthusiastically endorsed by Obama. When founded in November 2000, CCX’s carbon trading market was predicted to grow anywhere between $500 billion and $10 trillion. Fortunately before its collapse Sandor was able to net $98.5 million for his 16.5% stake when CCX was sold.
http://www.suite101.com/content/carbon-trade-ends-on-quiet-death-of-chicago-climate-exchange-a305704
Carbon Trading is also a dead horse.
World Bank warns of ‘failing’ international carbon market
Report shows collapse in market with just $1.5bn of credits traded internationally last year.
The international market in carbon credits has suffered an almost total collapse, with only $1.5bn (£916m) of credits traded last year – the lowest since the market opened in 2005, according to a report from the World Bank.
A fledgling market in greenhouse gas emissions in the US also declined, and only the European Union’s internal market in carbon remained healthy, worth $120bn. However, leaked documents seen by the Guardian appear to show that even the EU’s emissions trading system is in danger.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/01/world-bank-failing-carbon-markets
Kyoto deal loses four big nations
May 29, 2011
DEAUVILLE, France: Russia, Japan and Canada told the G8 they would not join a second round of carbon cuts under the Kyoto Protocol at United Nations talks this year and the US reiterated it would remain outside the treaty, European diplomats have said.
The future of the Kyoto Protocol has become central to efforts to negotiate reductions of carbon emissions under the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, whose annual meeting will take place in Durban, South Africa, from November 28 to December 9.
Developed countries signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. They agreed to legally binding commitments on curbing greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.
At last Thursday’s G8 dinner the US President, Barack Obama, confirmed Washington would not join an updated Kyoto Protocol, the diplomats said.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/kyoto-deal-loses-four-big-nations-20110528-1f9dk.html#ixzz1OAlcVFG3
Gyges if you were referring to me, I don’t have a problem with it at all. In fact it’s my belief that because Global Warming is a dead issue Obama had no choice but to swing this way.
Shallow and disingenuous?
That’s sounds like a lying saucer.
Does anyone else find it odd that a long time global warming denier and general business apologist has a problem with this? Hmmmm it’s almost like the problem is the person, not the policy.
Nah, that would be shallow and disingenuous.
What really happened in Wyoming last week?
Perhaps we should ask billionaire coal hauler Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha.”
Energy and climate analysts and Big Green organizations are still staggering around for an answer to the Obama administration’s blockbuster news in Wyoming’s coalfields last week to green-light the mining of an estimated 750 million-2.4 billion tons of coal on public lands. According to environmental analysts, “when burned, the coal threatens to release more than 3.9 billion tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, equal to the annual emissions from 300 coal-fired power plants.”
As Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar scrambles to explain his wildly exaggerated claims of the coal lease sales from his announcement, the truth is that this mind-boggling announcement comes on the heels of EPA administrator’s proposed new rules to crack down on mercury emissions from coal-fired plants–that will, in effect, continue the move away from coal-fired energy.
It would be easy to point an accusing finger at Salazar, the former cowboy Senator from neighboring coal-rich Colorado who accepted massive amounts of contributions from dirty energy companies, and whose Bureau of Land Management quietly gave the green light for another 430 million tons of coal at the Antelope strip mine in Wyoming last year (within hours of the EPA’s crackdown on mountaintop removal mining operations in central Appalachia).
But I don’t think Salazar is the culprit on this Wyoming spring sale: President Obama needs to be called out for his less than transparent catering to his long-time billionaire and coal-profiteering friends.
http://www.energynow.com/node/5379
Or, maybe we could encourage people to consume less. Constant growth requires constant room to grow, this applies to economies as well as brook trout. I’d much rather my kid have some trees to look at then that he lives in a country that has a larger GDP than I grew up in.
OT:
http://www.parentdish.com/2011/06/02/school-yearbook-worst-people-list/?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk3|67696
Nuutie – given the level of ‘thought’ you display here I am going to guess that your are low enough down on the evolutionary scale that asexual reproduction is standard. That makes what I suggest you go do not physically impossible as it is for humans.
As long as the Republican’s only offer us wingnuts, wackos and morans ‘Democrats’ like Obama can do just about anything and get away with it. This is example 1348 of the Obama Administration illustrating the point for slow learners.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=30.561265,-92.021019&num=1&t=h&sll=30.53353,-92.081509&sspn=0.076901,0.128059&ie=UTF8&ll=30.561346,-92.021034&spn=0.002287,0.005252&z=18