Last year’s award, which inaugurated this non-coveted prize, went to the Bush Administration’s Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, for setting a new record in refusing to add extremely imperiled plants and animals to the Endangered Species List.
This year’s award goes to Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, for fighting the government’s designation of the Polar Bear as a ‘Threatened’ Species.
Reasons For This Award
“Governor Palin has waged a deceptive, dangerous, and costly battle against the polar bear,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Her position on global warming is so extreme, she makes Dick Cheney look like an Al Gore devotee.”
Palin has waged a deceptive public relations campaign, asserting that the polar bear is increasing in number. But most polar bear populations (including Alaska’s southern Beaufort Sea bears) are in decline, and two-thirds (including all of Alaska’s bears) are projected to disappear by 2050 by the U.S. Geological Survey.
Governor Palin has repeatedly asserted that Alaskan Department of Fish and Game scientists found fatal flaws in the sea ice models used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to determine that the polar bear is, indeed, threatened. When challenged, Palin refused to release this alleged state review.
Independent scientists, however, eventually obtained a copy of it through the federal Freedom of Information Act, revealing that Palin had lied: The Alaskan state scientists had actually concurred with the Fish and Wildlife Service determination that Arctic sea ice is melting at an extraordinary rate, and that this meltdown now, indeed, threatens the polar bear with extinction.
“All global warming deniers are eventually forced to suppress scientific studies, and Palin is no different,” said Suckling. “To maintain her ludicrous opposition to protecting the polar bear in the face of massive scientific consensus, Palin stepped over the line to lie about and suppress government science.”
Palin has since filed a frivolous lawsuit against the federal government to have the polar bear’s now ‘threatened’ status overturned. Meanwhile, the U.S. Geological Survey announced on September 16th that the 2008 summertime Arctic sea-ice melt was the second greatest on record, nearly matching the extraordinary melt of 2007.
“Palin’s insistence that Arctic melting is ‘uncertain’ is like someone debating the theory of gravity as they plunge off a cliff,” said Suckling. “It’s hopeless, reckless, and extremely cynical.”
Background Of This Award
In 1598, Dutch sailors landing on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius discovered a thriving, flightless, three-foot-tall, extraordinarily friendly bird. Its original scientific name was Didus ineptus.
To the rest of the world today, it’s known as the Dodo — now the most famous extinct species on Earth. It evolved over millions of years with no natural predators, and it eventually lost the ability to fly, becoming a land-based consumer of fruits, nuts, and berries. Having never known predators, it showed no fear of these sailors or the menagerie of animals accompanying them to Mauritius.
And its extremely trusting nature soon led to its extremely rapid extinction. By 1681, the Dodo had completely vanished from the face of the Earth.
What a horrendous award to win; and what an abysmal legacy, for a Vice Presidential Candidate of the United States. I wonder if Governor Palin will place this trophy in her office, perhaps next to her endangered Grizzly Bear pelt that she likes to show off to visitors.
We need national leaders today who will fight For conservation of our national resources and our national wildlife, not Against them. Environmentally, the last eight years of the Bush Administration has been atrocious; we cannot afford four more years of the same.
And as I said in my earlier posted article about Governor Sarah Palin: Maybe Your Type of Leader; Definitely Not Mine.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a nonprofit conservation organization dedicated to both the protection, and the preservation, of Earth’s endangered species and wild places.
Thanks for this, Ed...
Blessings and Love - Micke
Georg