News Roundup

  • Papua New Guinea is getting its first national conservation area.
  • WCS is getting some money from the World Bank and GEF to protect tigers. Weird, since pretty much the entire WCS tiger team moved to Panthera a couple years ago..
  • Patagonia employee gets paid time off to bike over 2,000 miles to promote Yukon2Yellowstone project. Blogs about it, with pictures.
  • Andy Revkin finally pushes back against George Will. I have to say, the fact that this is such a big deal — that a major columnist is trying to deny climate change — is actually pretty encouraging. I think in years past, Will just would’ve gotten away with it.
  • Dave Connell, associate director of marketing at TNC, wants you to know how important marketing is to conservation.
  • Obama’s restoring the old ESA rules.
Posted by Tim on March 3rd, 2009 • • 5 comments
Tags: ••••••

5 Responses to 'News Roundup'

Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'News Roundup'.

  1. driftwood said, on March 3rd, 2009 at 6:56 pm

    I just read Andrew Alexander’s (The Post’s ombudsman’s) second response. He now acknowledges that there is less ice in the arctic than in 1979 but completely ignores the fact that the pattern of accumulation and withdrawal of ice in the antarctic is substantial and consistent with the predictions of warming, not cooling or stable temperatures. We are ill-served by this lack of understanding of what are, after all, fairly simple ideas.

    In the antarctic the ambient temperature in the interior is wll below freezing. Any precipiation that falls accumulates. When the temperatures rise, the air gets warmer and there is more precipitation, which accumulates. That’s not so hard to understand.

    Meanwhile the pace of melting at the periphery of the antarctic is truly frightening.

  2. B Madsen said, on March 5th, 2009 at 9:23 am

    While Obama did reverse the part about consultation by the FWS, he did not touch the changes that were put in to negate the use of the ESA to regulate GHG emissions via impacts on polar bear habitat. Anyone know if there are plans to reverse that bit too?

  3. Tim said, on March 5th, 2009 at 9:41 am

    Fair enough. I believe the conventional thinking is that trying to regulate emissions using the ESA would be, while probably legal, a pretty insane way to go about doing it. Climate change appears to be Obama’s top one or two issues to deal with this year (he’s even signaled waiting on health care), so it bears watching. I think if he were to use one of the regulatory agencies to control emissions, he’d probably go through EPA. Thanks for the comment!

  4. B Madsen said, on March 6th, 2009 at 8:13 am

    …that was quick…

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101521908&ft=1&f=1025
    Senate Clears Way To Reverse Polar Bear Rule

    by The Associated Press

    NPR.org, March 5, 2009 ยท The Senate has cleared the way for the Obama administration to reverse a rule saying that greenhouse gases cannot be restricted in an effort to protect polar bears from global warming.

    The rule was issued in the waning days of George W. Bush’s presidency.

    On Thursday, the Senate defeated a move by Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski to require that the new administration go through a lengthy process to reverse the Bush-era rules. The vote was 52-42.

  5. Tim said, on March 6th, 2009 at 12:03 pm

    I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama declined to revise that particular rule. It would be such a Rube-Goldbergian way to address emissions.

Leave a Reply