Unlike most policy decisions, those leading to extinction are irreversible. That biological fact makes Bush’s lame duck actions to undermine the Endangered Species Act all the more reprehensible.

Bush must publish his new rules to undermine current legislation by Friday, November 21 in order to ensure they take effect before January 20 when Obama will be sworn in. Oblivious to election results, indifferent to the will of the people, Bush apparently will do just that, disregarding more than 250,000 public comments on the proposed rules. Bush is standing on the White House balcony giving each and every one of us the middle-finger salute as his final gesture of governance.

Plants and animals currently protected by law from the impacts of dams, highways and other large-scale projects will no longer be if Bush has his way on his way out. He seems determined to leave a legacy of destruction by rushing to put these rules in place before Obama can reverse his subversive actions.

Have no doubt that these rules have been rushed with the sole intent of preventing Obama from taking corrective actions when he assumes power. The Interior Department worked furiously to finalize the rules over the vigorous objections of many Representatives in the Congress and a phalanx of environmentalists. The changes were proposed by Bush on November 12 after 3 months of frantic activity, and they have changed little in spite of the massive influx of public input.

I have written before that one goal of this parting act is to exclude from consideration the emission of greenhouse gases when evaluating if a species could be harmed by a new project. This rule change is designed specifically to aid the coal industry, further indication that Bush has nothing but disdain for those concerned about climate change. But the most absurd rule change will exclude advice from the government’s own biologists who evaluate the impact of federal projects such as dams on endangered species. Currently, independent wildlife biologists must evaluate and sign off on a project. That will no longer be the case. Amazingly, under the new rules the federal agency in charge of a proposed project will also be the same agency that determines if the project will have a negative impact on species. That is not just the fox guarding the hen house of rare fowl; that is a federal mandate to have the fox eat the last individual of the species he is supposed to be protecting.

This final act of aggression culminates a concerted eight year campaign to gut the Endangered Species Act. Only 59 species have been placed on the list under Bush’s watch. His father listed 58 species per year for each year in office. Bill Clinton placed an average of 62 species per year for eight years. In the past two years, Bush has the astonishing record of listing no native species as endangered, a biological absurdity. Bush routinely discards scientific advice. He effects change not through the transparent process of proposing legislation but through the secretive means of procedural shifts, and by overturning long-standing policies with lack of enforcement. He departs the Oval Office on a trail of shame.

This action by Bush is outrageous, a final nail in the tainted legacy of failed presidency.

By Jeff Schweitzer

(Originally posted on the Huffington Post )

Presidents have historically made their greatest marks and most lasting impacts when surprising the public with actions that defy the expectations of narrow ideology. Given the historic nature of Obama’s election, his incredible popularity and majority mandate, Obama has an opportunity to do the same, and to change the course of history. Let’s see how.

We all know the classic example of Nixon going to China. In the context of the Cold War in the 1970s, a Democratic president simply could not have initiated dialogue with Mao Zedong without being accused of being soft on Communism. Republicans would have skewered that president alive with cries of selling out, naïveté and perhaps treason. But such accusations would ring hollow when levied against Nixon, who built his career as an enemy of Communism, starting with his slime campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas. The same social dynamics of "reverse credibility" worked in favor of Reagan when he engaged Gorbachev during the transitional periods of perestroika and glasnost.

Obama has the stature built on the people’s good will to go where no Democrat has gone before. With his liberal credentials unquestioned, Obama can do something that no Republican could accomplish without being accused of social treason. Obama can redefine the role of a limited government in a society of expanding expectations of personal responsibility. We could be entering the Obama era in which the executive branch is reduced to an efficient organization tackling only those issues in which the government has a true comparative advantage, leaving the rest to individual states or to a properly-regulated private sector where appropriate. This would be a time when citizens expect less from the government and more from themselves. Obama can explore the outer limits of small government solutions like no conservative ever could.

This idea might seem the height of lunacy in the face of two wars, the Wall Street bailout, government handouts to Detroit, ballooning deficits, a $10 trillion debt and a crumbling health care system. But this time of crises is exactly when we have an opportunity, and obligation, to look for a new path so that the next generation can avoid the calamities we now face. Clearly what we are doing now under Republican leadership is not working. Doing more of the same and expecting a different outcome is a form of insanity.

Only a popular Democrat can reign in a government out of control, just as only Nixon could talk to Mao. Our time has come.

We must, first, once and for all reject the ridiculous myth that Republicans are the party of small government and fiscal responsibility. Indisputable facts prove otherwise. Ronald Reagan, the icon of the right, proposed the largest tax increase in U.S. history, following the catastrophic failure of his tax cuts. He oversaw the most bloated growth of the federal government. Reagan created, with his proposed budgets (not that of Democratic Congress), the largest debts and deficits in history at that time. It took a Democrat, over the hard-fought objections of a Republican Congress, to balance the budget, reduce the debt, decrease the size of the federal workforce, reform welfare, and usher in an eight year period of non-inflationary growth and prosperity. Then we have Bush, a Republican who epitomizes financial mismanagement. He mushroomed our debt to $10 trillion and exploded our deficits in an orgy of prolifigate spending with no off-setting revenue. By fighting two wars with no way to pay for the efforts, Bush has effectively raised our taxes to record levels; we just have not yet gotten the invoice in the mail. The money has to come from somewhere. That would be us. Now we have to cut the checks. Have no doubt that Bush instituted the biggest tax increase in our nation’s history. Bush is like an identity thief who has gone wild with a stolen credit card. He has lived high on the hog without ever paying a cent for his excessive lifestyle and he is now handing us the bill as he drives away in his new car, with a big screen TV in the trunk. We are that guy in his rear view mirror, standing forlornly in the street, with ruined credit and a foreclosure notice on the door.

The facts speak clearly. Republicans have proven themselves to be fiscally irresponsible. This simply cannot be disputed. This is a fact, an undeniable, verifiable, indisputable fact. The Republicans, not Democrats, have raised taxes to record levels, expanded the federal payroll, created record debts and tapped out the public credit card with unprecedented deficits. Stop, stop, stop, stop this outrageous lie that Democrats are the party of tax and spend big government. Forever silence the ridiculous idea that Republicans are the "daddy" party imposing discipline and Democrats the "mommy" party devoted to pampering. Since World War II, only the Democrats have proven to be effective fiscal leaders. That is a fact. As Bill Maher might say in his "New Rules" segment: stop borrowing from your grandkids while pretending to be fiscally conservative.

Bill Clinton, not Ronald Reagan, was the leader who declared that the "era of big government is over." Obama can now take that to the next level. Every American would agree that our government has a proper role in protecting our national security. While not universal, most Americans believe federal funds should also support basic research and development, space exploration, and efforts to protect the environment within our borders and internationally. Most Americans believe that our health care system is broken, and that the federal government will have some role to play in creating a viable solution. A majority of Americans now clearly understand that the government must better regulate commerce and provide more effective oversight to protect our financial system from fraud and abuse.

Obama can focus on these issues that only the federal government can address. He can approach all problems from the perspective that smaller government is better than bigger. He can emphasize from his bully pulpit the importance of personal responsibility. Once past the economic crisis that he inherited from an out-of-control Republican, Obama can reinstitute a pay-as-you-go philosophy to reintroduce fiscal sanity to Washington.

Republican failures have led to the worst big-government interventions of all to save Wall Street. Once Obama cleans up this Republican mess, he can build on the Clinton legacy and lead us to a new era of prudent government.

We need a government as small as possible but as big as necessary. Obama can do that.

With a house in disrepair or a car coughing toward the next tune up, maintenance deferred saves money in the present, but at a price of higher future costs. Items needing attention can only be deferred, not ignored. Since nature offers no free lunch, we either pay less now or more later. Unfortunately the world collectively has taken the latter strategy in maintaining our environment, putting off critical actions today for short-sighted savings at the great expense of future generations.

The United Nations recently issued a report documenting worsening global air pollution, with an epicenter of soot, thick brown smog and clouds of noxious chemicals fouling the air in Asia. Automobile exhaust, smoke from slash-and-burn agriculture, waste from coal-fired power plants, ash and particulates from wood stoves and fireplaces and belching factory smokestacks have combined to create enormous acrid plumes of toxic clouds that irritate lungs, block sunlight, and impact local weather patterns across large swaths of the Far East. Crop yields in China are declining as a consequence of diminished sunshine. We are now paying the invoice handed to us by our parents for their deferred actions to control pollution even as we are bequeathing to the next generation an even bigger maintenance bill.

Industrial pollution is not our only problem. Lest you believe we are isolated from environmental degradations far off in foreign lands, visit Florida. We have seen there a 20-fold increase in asthma in the past several decades as a consequence of severe drought in Africa. Massive dust storms from that continent’s expanding deserts travel across the Atlantic and into the lungs of unsuspecting citizens in the Sunshine State. Winds respect no political boundaries, and are unimpressed by vast ocean expanses. Like it or not, the world is tightly interconnected, depriving us the luxury of ignoring problems that might seem initially to be irrelevant to our daily lives. Pollution there is pollution here.

This brings us to climate change and human health. While hurricanes, melting polar ice and rising sea levels capture public attention, another dire consequence of global warming lurks under the radar. As the earth warms, we are witnessing a growing threat to human health in seven key areas:

1. Expanding range of tropical diseases
2. New strains of old diseases as they move north
3. More and more severe allergies as ragweed season grows longer
4. More mold and fungus in hotter more humid weather
5. Change in rainfall patterns affecting food production
6. More extreme heat waves
7. More frequent and severe droughts and longer and more intense fire season

The most immediate threats are the first two. Obama’s transition team should work closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention so that on January 20 a plan is in place to tackle the problem. Such action was not possible under the Bush Administration, which denied the reality of global warming, and therefore would do nothing to mitigate the impacts of a changing climate. This inaction constitutes criminal neglect, causing us now to act with greater haste to recover some of that lost time.

The danger is real and immediate. As warmer weather moves north, disease vectors go along for the ride. Many of those vectors are insects, like mosquitoes, which are expanding their range. At the same time, climate change is wreaking havoc with bird reproduction, resulting in a decline of 75% of all bird species. Those birds were eating insects. With fewer birds to eat the bugs, not only will the pests be moving into the United States, where many have never been before, but there will be more of them than ever before across the expanded range. Water-borne diseases will increase in frequency because warmer water expands the season and range of diseases like schistosomiasis and cholera. Rodents also proliferate in the growing temperate regions with milder wet winters; they themselves are disease carriers, and also are reservoirs for disease-carrying ticks.

These concerns are not theoretical. New Yorkers suffered the first-ever U.S. outbreak of West Niles virus in 1999, a new scourge for the city that is now an annual threat. A new strain of West Nile that was first detected in 2002 is moving rapidly across the country, having already infected 175,000 people, killing 117. Officials are now investigating over a dozen cases of typhus in Austin, Texas. A decade ago, severe drought in the southwest reduced predator populations, leading to an explosion of white-footed mice, which carry Hantavirus, leading to a then-unprecedented breakout of that disease in the Four Corners region.

In summers to come, we will need to worry about more than charred meat and a few irritating but harmless mosquito bites. Coming to your backyard with a warming climate are dengue fever, malaria, yellow fever, Hantavirus, leptospirosis, Japanese B Encephalitis, elephantiasis, leishmaniasis and Chagas disease.

Flying and crawling critters bringing the gift of new disease are not the only problem. We will be sneezing more as well. An increase in carbon dioxide supercharges the growth of the most aggressive pollen producers, including hay-fever causing ragweed and the trees that give us the worst springtime allergies. But we are still not done. While we fight off noxious mosquitoes and dab our running noses, we will also be swatting more wasps and yellow jackets. These stinging beasts are already showing up in parts of Alaska where they have never been seen before.

For many, the threats of climate change seem temporally remote and geographically distant, and therefore difficult to take seriously. Perhaps the growing possibility of contracting a nasty tropical disease will finally be a wake up call.

Hello, my name is Jeff Schweitzer, and I am a Fake American. I have been Fake now for 22 months. I just take one day at a time. I am doing the best I can. I think often about Real America, but realize I can never go back. I know that if I blindly wave the flag again I will not be able to stop. I understand that if I again question the patriotism of my opponents, I condemn myself to a lifetime addiction to mindless jingoism.

Real America. Real Americans. Real Virginia. Attacking the patriotism of a political rival is a vile act, the product of a small mind ignorant of our history and blind to the fundamentals of democracy. Keep that in mind as Sarah Palin contemplates a run for president in 2012. Almost 65% of Republicans want her to run. We cannot afford to relax even in the face of Obama’s historic victory.

Surely the ugliest legacy of the presidential campaign was this resurgence of the right-wing Republican idea of a patriotic “real America” battling against the evils of leftist ideology. Palin went so far as speaking of “pro-American areas of this great nation” leading to the inevitable conclusion that regions of the country are anti-American. Her good friend Joe the Plumber said that McCain was the “real American” in the election.

McCain advisor Nancy Pfotenauer said that Northern Virginia is not the “real Virginia.” Given the opportunity to distance herself from the comment, she stood by the original statement. Joe McCain, the candidate’s brother, called this region “communist country.”

But Palin/McCain advisers and their ever-present unlicensed plumber friend were not alone. Representative Robin Hayes said that “liberals hate real Americans that (sic) work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.” Representative Michele Bachmann boldly declared that Obama was “very anti-American.” But she went further, raising the specter of McCarthy by calling on major newspapers to investigate her colleagues in the House to “find out if they are pro-America or anti-America.” Bachmann failed to define how a congressman might fall into one category or the other. I suspect that would be the mandate for the new House Un-American Activities Committee. Continuing the Joe McCarthy theme, Republicans also called Obama a Marxist, communist, socialists and, by association, a domestic terrorist.

What is most striking about these divisive attacks are their asymmetry. Note dear reader that nobody in the Obama campaign, and no Democrat in the House or Senate, ever called McCain, Palin or a Republican member of the Congress unpatriotic, un-American or anti-America. The Democrats called Senator McCain… Senator McCain. The contrast could not be greater, or more revealing about character.

Extremist Republicans continue to harbor the corrosive notion that only right-wing supporters love this country, and that any opponents by definition are anti-American. Ignoring the incredible arrogance of that idea, consider the inherent dangers of such nonsense. By denigrating opponents, these extremists remove the opportunity for debate or possibility of finding effective solutions to our most pressing problems. By questioning a rival’s love of country, right-wing ideologues reduce public discourse and politics to the level of religious orthodoxy. Being convinced that god is on your side leaves no room for discussion.

Reducing politics to religion has other pernicious effects besides fostering ersatz patriotism. Trying to play to his religious base, McCain endangered our country with his selection for vice president. Be clear that opposition to Palin has absolutely nothing to do with gender. Asking Palin to wait in the wings to serve as leader of the most powerful nation on earth is like throwing a novice flyer into the cockpit of a Boeing 747 and asking him to fly the plane. Whether the new pilot was male or female, I would not get on that aircraft. Nor would I want a first year medical student to perform brain surgery on me, whether the doctor was man or woman. Palin was simply unqualified, and McCain grossly irresponsible for selecting her. He did so because he confused politics with orthodoxy. He confused opposition with anti-Americanism. He confused patriotism with mindless support.

We can hope that Obama’s election was a repudiation of these sick attacks on patriotism and love of country. But probably not. Remember that 49 million Americans were willing to risk the possibility of a Palin presidency, and Palin led the pack of those attacking our patriotism. We must remain vigilant. In the meantime, I am going to rejoice in the defeat of dark forces and proudly reclaim my mantle of patriot.

Like a breath of fresh air, president-elect Obama clearly understands the urgency of climate change. Unlike his soon-to-be predecessor, a North Pole free of summer ice actually gives Obama pause. He intends to act appropriately to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He also speaks eloquently about the need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and increase investments in renewable energies. Those positions on climate and energy are fortunate, because one informs the other, and neither can be achieved alone. The times demand that we stop speaking of energy independence and global warming as if the two were separate problems amendable to isolated solutions. Each represents one side of a single coin, forever joined together by the demands of economy and nature.

Obama goes further than any president in his commitment to address these problems. But he does not go far enough if we take a truly long-term view, as we must. Based on what we can reasonably anticipate Obama will support in his first term, we can suggest how his agenda can create the foundation for more ambitious, but critically needed actions.

Obama’s Program

From his campaign speeches and literature, we can plausibly assume that Obama will institute early on some form of cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. He knows that we must marshal market forces to the task if we hope to succeed. The stated goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050.

Obama rightfully opposes reprocessing nuclear fuel, or storing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Until we solve the waste storage problem, nuclear energy is not a viable option, no matter how attractive the atom may be as an energy source free of carbon pollution.

He supports the creation of a $150 billion “green technologies fund” some portion of which he will devote to clean coal and carbon sequestration technologies. This fund will also support entrepreneurial advances in wind, solar and geothermal energy. His goal is to generate 10% of all electricity from renewables by 2012, and 25% by 2025.

In the transportation sector, some resources from the green fund will support research and development of cellulosic ethanol fuels. In addition, Obama will create a new $7,000 tax credit for purchasing advanced vehicles, and get 1 million made-in-America plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015.

He will promote conservation, energy efficiency, and credits to weatherize 1 million homes annually. Obama will institute a “use it or lose it” program for existing oil and gas leases to encourage oil companies to explore and drill in areas already designated for that purpose.

Beyond Obama’s Program

All the elements embedded in Obama’s energy program make good sense, and deserve our enthusiastic support. But wind, solar and geothermal energy are not the ultimate endpoint. All of these programs will, in the end, only be useful if viewed as transitional to a hydrogen economy. Yes, in the short-term, we absolutely must tap all available renewables, and natural gas, to bridge the yawing gap between our current dependence on fossil fuels and a future of unlimited clean energy.

We already see the ultimate solution to meeting the energy demands of a growing global population while eliminating greenhouse gases: using solar and wind energy to power homes and factories and to electrolyze water to create hydrogen, which will power our cars and trucks. When fully in place, this energy sector will be clean, with nearly zero emissions, limitless and inexpensive.

The technologies exist, but are not yet sufficiently developed to make widespread implementation economical. And that is precisely where the government comes into the picture. Moving to a hydrogen economy is a big task, but is on a scale no grander than what has been done before.

The largest public works project in human history was initiated by President Eisenhower in the early 1950s to construct a national system of interstate and defense highways, now more commonly known as the Interstate Highway System. One purpose initially was to ensure that the military could readily transport materiel and troops from one coast to the other. Civilians immediately became the dominate users. These nearly 50,000 miles of road transformed the economy and culture of the United States, and raised public expectations about an optimistic future. The net cost to the federal government was about $140 billion by the time the system was deemed complete in the mid 1970s. Compare this to the $700 billion package to bail out Wall Street, which will bequeath to us no infrastructure development at all.

With an investment similar in scope to the bailout, and an infrastructure program considerably less ambitious than Eisenhower’s, we could shift our economy from oil to hydrogen within a decade. Consider the enormous national security and environmental implications.

The role of government is to overcome three significant barriers to success. The first is the question of who goes first. Nobody wants to install a national network of hydrogen filling stations if no cars are made to run on hydrogen. But no automaker wants to build hydrogen cars without a national network of service stations already in place. Solving that problem will require government guarantees and tax incentives. The second is the need, initially, to subsidize the price of hydrogen cars with tax credits to make them economically viable in small numbers as they first come off the line. Over time, hydrogen vehicles should be cost competitive with traditionally fueled autos when produced in large numbers. The third is to fund research and development to improve the efficiency and lower the cost of solar and wind technologies to enable the cheap production of hydrogen using these renewable and clean energy sources.

The government’s investment to transform the United States into a leading green economy of the 21st century is rather small compared to the staggering benefits. Outside of direct expenditures on our military, nothing could be more important to our national security. We would wean ourselves from foreign oil, relegating the Middle East to nothing but a distant tourist attraction. We would nearly eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the energy and transportation sectors, finally tackling the problem of global warming in a meaningful way. We would ensure that we become the primary exporter of green technologies to the rest of the world. We would have cheap abundant energy to fuel a growing economy.

We can do this, but must keep our eye on the ball. As Obama moves to implement his energy program, we should have in mind a hydrogen economy as the final objective. That goal clearly defined will help guide the energy decisions we make over the next 10 years.