From the Inbox: Do You Trust BP to drill in polar bear habitat?

BP in the Arctic: Disaster on Ice? Do you trust BP to use risky new drilling technology in pristine Arctic habitats? Tell Interior Secretary Salazar to reject BP’s application to drill in the Beaufort Sea -- and help avert the next oil spill catastrophe! Dear Friend, They’re BACK ... The same company that just brought you the most catastrophic oil spill in American history is now planning a risky new project that would use untested drilling technology in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea -- the heart of America’s polar bear habitat. BP’s so-called Liberty Project would use the biggest rig in the world -- propped up by a manmade gravel island three miles from shore – to drill up to eight miles horizontally, exposing pipes to the same kind of explosive “gas kicks” that led to the blowout in the Gulf. In other words, this latest BP project is a disaster waiting to happen! Please help stop it by signing this urgent Petition of Protest to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. You might have thought BP would lay low after the Gulf disaster: focusing on the cleanup effort and repairing its dismal environmental record. Instead, the company is planning to begin drilling this fall in one of the two Polar Bear Seas that are home to HALF of our nation’s polar bears. Let me share a few facts about BP’s Liberty Project: Even though it’s three miles offshore, this project is NOT subject to President Obama’s moratorium on offshore drilling in the Arctic! That’s because the operation is built on a 31-acre manmade gravel island. In other words, BP is getting a free pass based on a technicality. BP is prepared to drill up to eight miles horizontally in search of oil, even though this type of drilling is even more prone to gas kicks like the one that caused the huge blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. In order to drill these unprecedented wells, BP has commissioned the building of the largest drilling rig in the world! Shockingly, BP was allowed to write its own environmental assessment and emergency response plan for the Liberty Project, just like it did in the Gulf. And we know what happened there. The Obama Administration needs to make clear that the days of BP running the show are over. Tell Secretary Salazar to stop the Liberty Project immediately by denying BP’s application to drill. He is unlikely to do that unless he hears a groundswell of public opposition -- starting with you. BP’s horrendous environmental record is well documented. It is already responsible for the 2010 Gulf disaster, the 2006 oil spill on Alaska’s North Slope (the largest oil spill to date in the region) and the 2005 Texas City explosion that killed 15 workers and injured 170 more. We can’t afford a repeat performance in the Arctic. High winds, freezing temperatures and dangerous sea ice could make cleanup impossible. The nearest Coast Guard station is over 1,000 miles away, and much of the oil spill response equipment on-site is more than two decades old! Tell Secretary Salazar to prevent a disaster on ice by saying No to BP. Sincerely, Peter Lehner Executive Director Natural Resources Defense Council

Polar bear overseer: few tools to stop melting ice

Polar bear policy in America can be summed up succinctly: The iconic bears are threatened with extinction, and so far nothing much is being done.

Two years after they were listed under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has taken no major action in response to their principal threat, the loss of sea ice habitat due to climate change.

Federal officials have declared that the Endangered Species Act will not be used in the attempt to regulate greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming and melting ice in the Arctic Ocean.

That leaves Rosa Meehan, the Fish and Wildlife Service marine mammals manager in Alaska, with few tools to protect the great bears of the Arctic. She hangs on to the hope that the scientists are wrong about the bears' future.

"Our crystal ball is not perfect," Meehan said last week.

She spoke between public hearings on whether the federal government should designate critical habitat for polar bears. Her agency has proposed designating 187,166 square miles of U.S. territory — 95 percent of it in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas — as polar bear critical habitat.

And that has drawn objections from the energy industry and other business interests. It would mean, for example, that before granting permits for offshore drilling, federal agencies would have to review whether the action would adversely modify the habitat.

More than one person has asked Meehan whether designating critical habitat — which, after all, would also be subject to warming — wouldn't be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

"I'm one of the people who really hopes, you know, hopefully we didn't get this completely right," she said. "Maybe bears will be able to hang on. And if they are, then we want to make sure we give them as easy a chance as possible to hang on in a marginal environment. And so that means addressing all the other potential effects on bears."

Interior Department Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, under threat of lawsuits, reluctantly listed polar bears in May 2008. He said the alarming loss in recent decades of summer sea ice in the Arctic, and climate models indicating the trend will continue, forced the decision.

The announcement came eight months after summer sea ice levels melted to their lowest recorded level ever: 1.65 million square miles, or nearly 40 percent below average since satellite monitoring began in 1979.

Along with the listing, Kempthorne created a "special rule" stating that the Endangered Species Act would not be used to set climate policy or limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The group that petitioned to list polar bears, the Center for Biological Diversity, calls the Kempthorne rule illegal and has sued to overturn it.

"The service itself has determined that loss of sea ice, which is a direct result of human-induced climate change, is the primary threat to polar bears' survival," said Alaska director Rebecca Noblin. "It defies logic to omit from consideration the single most important factor in listing the polar bear in the first place."

Alaskans on the other side of the issue are bewildered over why the agency is bothering to designate critical habitat for polar bears. The proposal covers an area larger than California.

Richard Glenn of Barrow, a geologist and vice president of Arctic Slope Regional Corp., told federal officials there's a breach in logic by creating regulatory hardships for Alaska companies while providing so little additional benefit for polar bears.

"If the creation of critical habitat is not going to result in any additional protection for the polar bear, then why create it?" he asked. People in Barrow, he said, already feel the effects of living near endangered species.Portman.

Meehan said she's playing the cards she's dealt. The Fish and Wildlife Service, she said, will do all it can to ensure polar bear survival. The agency's models indicate that if summer sea ice disappears in the Arctic Ocean, a remnant of polar bears could survive in the Canadian Arctic. Maybe there will be a global addressing of greenhouse gases, Meehan said.

"We'll have a place for bears to come back to," she said.

The threatened bears, she said, are important to public understanding.

"They clearly underscore the impacts of changes, and it's something people can relate to. That's a really important conservation contribution that this whole situation gives.

Source:
Google News, "Polar bear overseer: few tools to stop melting ice", accessed June 28, 2010