The environmentalists aren’t going to be happy about this, but Obama has sided with the Bush administration and decided to “uphold a George W. Bush-era rule under the Endangered Species Act that prevents linking greenhouse gas emissions from facilities to degradation of the polar bear’s habitat, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Friday.” If Obama had gone the other way, it would have allowed the EPA — bureaucrats — to regulate carbon emissions from just about every industry in the country under the auspices of the Clean Air Act. From the point of view of environmentalists, this would be far preferable to allowing Congress to legislate regulation of greenhouse gas emissions that would be full of holes and possibly repealed in the not-too-distant future. If you’re worried that the Obama administration has jeopardized the survival of these vicious beasts, I assure you the bears really do like to swim. But just in case the polar bear population does start to decline (it’s actually been on the rise for sometime), there’s always Antarctica.
