https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/03/12/polar-bears-and-global-warming/ Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:38:16 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.6 https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/03/12/polar-bears-and-global-warming/#comment-5114 Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:38:16 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/03/12/polar-bears-and-global-warming/#comment-5114 There are polar bear under US control in Alaska and one of the worries of the Right is that with the listing, there will be even more hurdles to extracting oil from AK and its surrounding waters. Equally challenging to Republicans is thenotion that, since polar bears are ice deopendnet, and loss of ice lead to the listing petition in the first place, businesses in the US might be forced to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the ESA, a statute with stronger citizen lawsuit provisions then the Clean Air Act. Essentially, with an ESA listing comes the very real possibility that power plants (as one example) might have to meet tight emission controls to keep their federal generation licenses because the Federal Energy Regulatory Commisssion has to comply withthe ESA in issuing licenses. For those who believe in the free market, this type of “back-handed” regulation onthe side of the ordinary person is a HUGE deal.

]]> https://gregladen.com/blog/2008/03/12/polar-bears-and-global-warming/#comment-5113 Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:59:40 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/03/12/polar-bears-and-global-warming/#comment-5113 One question that has me puzzled- what effect would having polar bears listed as endangered have? Are their many polar bears in territory under US control? I don’t know the law well enough to get what would be the practical result of this listing.

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