This is a suprise...

[Philo]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/23/marine ... index.html





updated 9:41 p.m. EDT, Sat August 23, 2008



Bush may seek protection for island chains

* Story Highlights
* Northern Marianas, Line Islands and American Samoa would be protected
* Cabinet agencies will evaluate protection for the chains
* Conservation groups have called for marine monument in Northern Marianas
* Next Article in U.S. »

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush will seek formal comment from his Cabinet agencies next week on a plan that could make three of the world's most remote and pristine island chains off-limits to commercial fishing and mineral exploration.
Parts of the Northern Mariana islands would be covered under the plan.

Parts of the Northern Mariana islands would be covered under the plan.

The action, which could be completed before Bush leaves office, would rank as one of the largest marine conservation efforts in history.

Bush's proposal would conserve parts of the Northern Mariana islands, the Line Islands in the central Pacific and American Samoa, environmentalists said Friday. Making them off-limits to fishing and energy development is the most stringent of the possible measures outlined.

The proposal is expected to be made public as soon as Monday, when the White House plans to send a memo to Cabinet members, including the Defense, Interior and Commerce secretaries, and the Council on Environmental Quality. They will evaluate various levels of protection for the three areas and the impacts of establishing marine reserves. The review is expected to take one to two months, the participants said.

"We have every expectation that the president will move forward on protecting these places sometime in the fall," said Diane Regas, ocean program director at Environmental Defense Fund. "Today, we put the champagne on ice, and we will pop it open."

Two years ago, the president made a huge swath of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands a national monument, barring fishing, oil and gas extraction and tourism from its waters and coral reefs. The area is the single largest conservation area on the planet.

It is unclear whether Bush will designate these new areas as monuments or use another executive mechanism that would allow limited fishing and other activities.

Conservation groups have been lobbying the White House to set aside 115,000 square miles of the Northern Mariana islands as a marine monument. The U.S. commonwealth -- 1,400 miles south of Japan in the Pacific Ocean -- is known as the Grand Canyon of the ocean and includes 14 islands that are home to seabirds, endangered and threatened sea turtles and giant coconut crabs, the largest land-living crustacean in the world.

The Environmental Defense Fund has pushed for protection of the Line Islands in the central Pacific along the equator. It is home to five times as many coral species as the Florida Keys.

As for American Samoa, the governor of that U.S. territory, Togiola Tulafono, asked President Bush in May to designate Rose Atoll as a national monument, citing its use as a nesting spot for endangered green sea turtles and a stopover for 12 species of migratory birds.

A spokeswoman for the Council on Environmental Quality would not confirm the phone call or the timing of the announcement.

"These vast Pacific areas are nearly three times the size of Texas," said Elliott Norse, founder and President of Marine Conservation Biology Institute. "Countless seabirds, dolphins, fishes, corals and tiny things as yet undiscovered could survive as a result, free of the threats that are eliminating them elsewhere."



Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[goon attack]

I don't find it surprising at all. bush is a moderate, not some whackjob.

He's done a good job under terrible circumstances.

[cprice12]

I don't find it surprising at all. bush is a moderate, not some whackjob.

He's done a good job under terrible circumstances.

[OS]

Curt... today was Opposites Day and we didn't get the memo. Only reasonable explanation.

[goon attack]

I don't find it surprising at all. bush is a moderate, not some whackjob.

He's done a good job under terrible circumstances.

You don't consider 9-11 a terrible circumstance for a President to have to deal with?

[SteveO]

I don't really see the connection with the good from conserving the Marianas and having to deal with 9/11. Dealing with 9/11 hardly gives you a free pass to royally (Frank) up your term.

I DO applaud Bush for the efforts though.


*** Shouldn't this be in Political Forum anyhow???

[goon attack]

Bush just gets a bad rap, period. He's a moderate. Doing this is not out of character for him.

Curt and OS are riding me for saying "terrible circumstances" because they are complainers who think America is like living in a hell whereas I'm always saying things aren't bad.

When I typed "terrible circumstance" I meant 9-11 specifically. They really think the whole ball of wax is broken because they don't have as much money every month to buy Lee Stempniak road jerseys off eBay lately because George W. Bush personally jacked up gas prices.

[OS]

9/11 was a terrible circumstance... which partially was caused by Bush's administration's ineptitude to follow up on security briefs that stated "Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might hijack U.S. passenger planes". I don't care who the president was or whether he has an R or a D next to his name, the fact that they either a) failed to follow up on it entirely or b) didn't think to investigate flight schools is unacceptable.

[goon attack]

Nothing is foolproof. There were great mistakes made by both the Clinton and the Bush administrations.

But since 9-11 I believe Bush has done a pretty good job under the circumstances. He rallied the nation, had the resolve to go into Iraq, has been a hard ass on ferreting out terrorists.

The war was not carried out properly for quite a while there. That's been Bush's biggest blunder in my opinion.

And you know what, if our security agencies had gone poking around into flight schools and other areas, the ACLU and the left wing would probably have been crying "FASCISM!"

Through the partisan lens, neither side can do the right thing. We all know this.

Bush just gets a bad rap. No two ways about it.

[big d note]

Doing this is not out of character for him.

It's certainly out of character with his environmental policies and his gutting of the EPA. Sierra magazine had an interesting article this month about numerous people that have been forced out or quit the EPA due to his anti-environmental policies. Not that I expect you to take the time to read the article, but here's the link if anyone is interested:

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200809/profiles/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[goon attack]

I disagree. Reducing the size of the government and caring about the environment are two different things. Did you read my thread about Bush's eco friendly ranch in Crawford?

http://www.lifeandtimesblog.com/2007/03 ... gores.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Now, you may not agree with his environmental policies or handling of the EPA, but it's a difference of opinion on who should take responsibility. I think taking care of the environment comes down to people giving a crap, not bigger government. That's why our household recycles religiously. I personally don't want to pay higher taxes only to put more people on the payroll because government is highly inefficient.

[big d note]

I probably should've phrased that better. He didn't "gut" the EPA by making it smaller; he just gutted its power and filled the place with his pals and industry lobbyists (the inmates running the asylum, so to speak). A few samples from that article I linked:

In the summer of 2002, lightning strikes and high winds combined to burn nearly half a million acres across southwest Oregon in the Biscuit Fire. With three decades' experience as a firefighter and postfire planner, Rich Fairbanks was tapped to lead the recovery effort. While Fairbanks's interdisciplinary team of 17 forestry experts sought balance between ecological restoration and timber harvest, officials in Washington pressured his supervisors, who boosted logging targets from 90 million board feet to 370 million board feet.

Asked by his superiors to assess a proposal to divert water from the Klamath River to downstream farmers, Mike Kelly argued that threats to endangered coho and chinook salmon and other protected species made the plan illegal. He was overruled by the "God Squad," a committee appointed by Vice President Dick Cheney to allow emergency exemptions to the Endangered Species Act. The irrigation plan went forward, resulting, in 2002, in a river choked with 70,000 dead salmon.

This is nothing new for Bush, who was already letting corporations pollute the crap out of Texas while he was governor. It was during his term that Houston passed LA as having the worst air pollution in the US, I believe.

[goon attack]

I don't think those two examples make a convincing case. I'm not saying he's a green president by any means, but I never understood this obsession with protecting every species on the planet. If obscure species die out it's not like the whole food chain will collapse. species will adapt or they will die too.

In the large picture: yes, polar bears are cool. But if they all die out, I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep over it.

Same goes for coho and chinook salmon.

I think corporations should be under fairly strict enviro controls (this is probably one of the areas I'm pretty left moderate on, like most social issues, specifically gay marriage), but certainly not to the point where they collapse under all the regulations. People have to have jobs, of course.

[glen a richter]

Why isn't this in the "Forum for Goon Standing on his Soapbox"?

Thank god he had the resolve to go into Iraq, because you know all those terrorists who hijacked the planes that hit on 9/11 from Iraq.... oh wait, yeah that's right. Iraq was never a threat to our national security before or after 9/11.

Where's Bin Laden?

[goon attack]

Why isn't this in the "Forum for Goon Standing on his Soapbox"?

Thank god he had the resolve to go into Iraq, because you know all those terrorists who hijacked the planes that hit on 9/11 from Iraq.... oh wait, yeah that's right. Iraq was never a threat to our national security before or after 9/11.

Where's Bin Laden?

Italy wasn't a threat to our national security in 1943 but we still went in there and beat ass.

Shit, Nazi Germany wasn't even a threat to our national security.

Iraq was never a threat? Why did all those Democrats say it was?

[glen a richter]

Because they succumbed to the post 9-11 fear mongering of Bush and Cheney. Since, many have admitted they were wrong. I applaud them for admitting that, but condemn them for believing something that was so obviously false.

[goon attack]

Because they succumbed to the post 9-11 fear mongering of Bush and Cheney. Since, many have admitted they were wrong. I applaud them for admitting that, but condemn them for believing something that was so obviously false.

They "succumbed" to fear mongering? What kind of pussies are they? Do you find that an acceptable rationale?

Jesus Flipping Christ, glen.

And btw, I don't agree with you. They thought they were on the right side of the issue, just like the opportunists they are. You should read Plato's Republic cover to cover.

[stlbluz]

Isn't there a forum for this crap?

[glen a richter]

Wow, "and btw (you) don't agree with me" big shocker there, when did you ever agree with me?

Hey, if you like the fact that we're pissing away billions of dollars on Iraq, that's your right to be foolish. If you're such a libertarian, as you claim to be, you should know that involvement in foreign issues and conflicts via troop presence is considered to be a primary no-no and the fact that we even have troops stationed anywhere in the world, not just Iraq or Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia (the latter which is precisely why 9/11 happened, by the way and the former which had nothing whatsoever to do with it) is completely contrary to the libertarian platform.

[goon attack]

Wow, "and btw (you) don't agree with me" big shocker there, when did you ever agree with me?

Hey, if you like the fact that we're pissing away billions of dollars on Iraq, that's your right to be foolish. If you're such a libertarian, as you claim to be, you should know that involvement in foreign issues and conflicts via troop presence is considered to be a primary no-no and the fact that we even have troops stationed anywhere in the world, not just Iraq or Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia (the latter which is precisely why 9/11 happened, by the way and the former which had nothing whatsoever to do with it) is completely contrary to the libertarian platform.

It's your opinion that we're "pissing away billions of dollars"



And why would a liberal care about pissing away money anyway? Your party is all about bloating government to the point of absurdity. We can only hope the GOP goes back to fiscal responsibility.