Obama Gets a C from the Center for Biological Diversity?
January 21st, 2010President Barack Obama’s first year in office has been a good news/bad news story for the environment, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
Overall, the Center for Biological Diversity gives the president’s environmental record so far a “C.”
Why?
“Obama’s record, while much better than Bush’s, is disappointing so far,” the group’s executive director, Kierán Suckling, said in a press release. “He has not lived up to his campaign promises by a long shot.”
“Luckily,” Suckling said, “there’s still time to get him back on track: We have to show him America cares.”
On endangered species, the Obama administration revoked some damaging Bush-era policies, but also stripped protection from gray wolves in the Northern Rockies and the Great Lakes region.
On climate, his administration followed the Supreme Court’s lead and declared carbon dioxide a threat to human health and welfare…
But it “provided virtually no leadership in congressional and Copenhagen negotiations to develop a real solution to global warming,” Suckling says.
What? President Obama went to the Global Warming conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, and personally delivered a strong message for action to combat climate change due to human induced global warming. What more can one president do?
At least this “average” grade should be cold comfort to conservative groups who want to claim that Obama is a wild-eyed liberal.
According to the group, the Obama administration took initial steps to address ocean acidification, but also increased the number of endangered sea turtles that can be caught and killed by industrial longline fisheries.
Take a look at Obama’s first-year report card and tell us what you think in the comments section.
The group pledges to keep up the pressure on the Obama administration “with scientific studies, legal action, grassroots organizing and media work.”
We’ll be watching, but The Locust Fork News-Journal would give the Obama administration at least a “B” compared to the F- of the Bush years, an administration that devalued science in favor of tearing down the wall separating church and state.
We’ll also be watching to see what the Obama EPA does about the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, which gets an F all around.
One of the ongoing problems with the federal bureaucracy under Obama is that much of the personnel is left over from the Bush years, including a certain Tea Party sympathizer who still works as a spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in South Alabama.
Tags: Center for Biological Diversity, Obama Gets a C from the Center for Biological Diversity
January 21st, 2010 at 1:42 pm
After a round of e-mails and phone calls, the Fish and Wildlife agent is no longer a Facebook friend of the tea baggers.