We've Got One Week Left to Stop One of Bush's Worst Environmental Attacks

By George Lakoff and Chris Shutes, AlterNet. Posted September 8, 2008.

The Endangered Species Act is our primary legal tool for environmental protection.

We have until September 15-about a week-to save the Endangered Species Act.

Not just some species, but the Act itself! Bush administration officials are proposing redefinitions of terms that would allow conservative appointees in federal agencies to virtually the destroy the Act.

Their goal is to allow proposed projects to proceed even if such projects would kill off endangered species or place them or their habitats in jeopardy.

If the changes are not effectively challenged by September 15, they will go into effect, and, Goodbye Species!

Act now: Go to the end of this article for instructions. We need the public to flood the agencies involved with comments opposing the redefinitions and rule changes.

When the Cat's Away

While our attention has been turned elsewhere, the Endangered Species Act, our major environmental protection legislation, is being gutted-now.

Not by Congress. Not by the courts. Not even by Bush's executive orders. It is being destroyed by redefinition, by a series of linguistic tricks.

Causation, within an ecological system, is almost always systemic in nature. That is, there are disparate contributing causes with disparate contributed effects in various places at different times. Direct causation is rare. Direct causation occurs when there is a single act at a given time and place that results in a single effect at that time and place. For example, a species of frog limited to a local wetland could be completely wiped out by a condo development with that wetland filled in. Direct causation.

But frogs around the country are dying out due to a complex combination of factors in different places at different times. Systemic causation.

Progressives and conservatives tend to think differently about causation. Conservatives, who think in terms of individual not social responsibility, tend to think in terms of direct causation-what an individual does. Progressives, who think in terms of social as well as individual responsibility, tend to think in terms of systemic causation. For example, if you ask what the causes of unemployment are, conservatives will tend to say people who aren't willing to do hard work, or willing to get the skills they need. Progressives will talk first about social causes: lack of education, lack of opportunities to acquire needed skills, corporate greed or insensitivity, and so on.

The present Endangered Species Act is realistic about systemic causation: disparate causes that contribute to disparate future effects count as "causation." But imagine what would happen if "causation" were redefined to mean only direct causation. Development projects now forbidden because they contribute significantly to future disparate loss of species and species habitat would now be allowed. Lots and lots of disparate projects at disparate places and times would be allowed. Their collective systemic effects could wipe out a great many habitats and species.

This is exactly what is being proposed by the Departments of the Interior and Commerce, as published in the Federal Register / Vol. 73, No. 159 / Friday, August 15, 2008 / Proposed Rules. They want to redefine causation so that only direct causation (they call it "an essential cause") counts as causation that jeopardizes the existence of a species listed under the Endangered Species act, or jeopardizes that species' critical habitat.

The effect is that proposed development projects can contribute significantly to the destruction of habitat and the extinction of species, provided that they do not directly cause the elimination of a species, or directly reduce the population of a species or extent of its habitat-something that rarely happens. The result is that almost all proposed developments that were previously understood as "causes" of habitat destruction or species extinction will no longer be seen as "causes" at all and will be permitted. The reason will be that "cause" itself will have been redefined.

Consultation

See more stories tagged with: bush, endangered species act, polar bears

George Lakoff is Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and author of The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st Century Politics With an18th Century Brain. Chris Shutes works for the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Water! Sign up now »