Leaving on the Low Road

Throughout the past eight years, the Bush administration has treated our country’s lands as if they belong to industry.

Through a series of short-cut measures and regulations that have cut science and the public out of decision making, the administration has consistently rolled back environmental protections and sharply favored industrial use and exploitation of our wild lands above all other public concerns.

And they’re not done yet.

With just two months left in office, the administration is leaving on the low road. Political appointees are finalizing land management plans, regulations, and policy changes that could severely damage our public lands for decades to come.

There may still be time to hold off irreparable harm to our wild lands if citizens learn about the final outgoing threats and take action now.

Here are some examples of the new last minute rules:

1. Pushing uranium mining on the edge of Grand Canyon National Park
2. Legalizing firearms in national parks
3. Dumping long-standing protections for streams from coal mining waste
4. Further committing the nation to dirty fuel
5. Weakening the Endangered Species Act
6. Opening proposed Wilderness to energy development

Climate Change Is Faster and More Extreme

Climate change is happening much faster than the world's best scientists predicted and will wreak havoc unless action is taken on a global scale, a new report warns.

The bleak report from WWF also predicts crops failures and the collapse of eco systems on both land and sea.

The agency says that the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - a study of global warming by 4,000 scientists from more than 150 countries which alerted the world to the possible consequences of global warming - is now out of date.

WWF's report, Climate Change: Faster, stronger, sooner, has updated all the scientific data and concluded that global warming is accelerating far beyond the IPCC's forecasts.

As an example it says the first 'tipping point' may have already been reached in the Arctic, where sea ice is disappearing up to 30 years ahead of IPCC predictions and may be gone completely within five years - something that hasn't occurred for a million years.

It could result in rapid and abrupt climate change rather than the gradual changes forecast by the IPCC.

The report has been endorsed by Professor Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the newly elected Vice Chair of the IPCC, who said: "It is clear that climate change is already having a greater impact than most scientists had anticipated, so it's vital that international mitigation and adaptation responses become swifter and more ambitious."

One in four mammals facing extinction

The International Union for Conservation of Nature says that an "extinction crisis" is under way with one in four mammals in danger of disappearing forever because of habitat loss, hunting and climate change.

Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions.

We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. To move forward we must recognize that in the midst of a magnificent diversity of cultures and life forms we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice, and a culture of peace. Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations.

Visit the Earth Charter, and take the pledge for a better planet.

Endangered Species Act

Thanks to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) -- the 1973 law that requires the federal government to protect endangered species and plan for their recovery -- iconic animals like the bald eagle, the peregrine falcon and the gray whale have rebounded to healthier numbers. It is one of the real success stories of the green movement.

If the Bush Administration has its way, however, those protections may soon be endangered themselves. This week, the White House proposed a sweeping regulatory overhaul of the ESA, virtually eliminating the independent scientific evaluation of the environmental impact of federal actions.

The administration has gone to great lengths to circumnavigate the clear language of the law by rigging the science (in many cases ignoring their own scientists), negotiating settlements favorable to industry and simply refusing to obey court orders. This time, however, the administration means to rewrite the law itself.

It's no secret the Bush administration, along with conservative Republican lawmakers and special-interest industries -- mining, logging and oil -- dislike environmental laws. Their interests should not outweigh our common public interest to preserve all life.

A loud public outcry is needed to halt the process. The president must not be allowed to achieve this dishonorable goal.

(To read more about biodiversity and it's importance to us all, visit E.O. Wilson's Biodiversity Foundation site. To see wonderful examples of life on our planet, visit Frans Lanting's site.)

Frans Lanting Photography

Click here for the Frans Lanting site.

This is a companion article to my previous post, regarding biodiversity.

Mr. Lanting shows us in beautiful style and with great skill and dedication why our responsibility to our neighbors is so important. We all share the same planet, but only we have the ability to destroy or preserve it.

Be warned, if you visit Mr. Lanting's site, allow a few hours to be amazed and awed -- and perhaps humbled by our responsibility.

Biodiversity loss could hurt medical research

Click here for the E.O. Wilson site

The world risks losing new medical treatments for osteoporosis, cancer and other human ailments if it does not act quickly to conserve the planet's biodiversity, a senior United Nations environmental official said Wednesday.

Earth's organisms offer a variety of naturally made chemical compounds with which scientists could develop new medicines, but are under threat of extinction.

We must understand how much we already depend on diversity of life to run our economies, our lives, but more importantly, what are we losing in terms of future potential.

The the work of more than 100 experts, its key authors based at Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment, and it underscores what may be lost to human health when species go extinct.