A Major New Threat To All Businesses/Industries
by Jim Sims
Environmental extremists and activist lawyers are pushing the federal government to add the Polar Bear to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) list. Such a listing would have major negative implications for virtually every business and industry operation in the United States.
The ESA is a very powerful law and could subject virtually any human activity in ALL 50 STATES to review and regulation by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) bureaucrats if the Polar Bear is listed as threatened or endangered. This will essentially declare "open season" for environmental lawyers to sue to block virtually any project that involves carbon dioxide emissions.
What are we doing to stop this?
1) Comments To USFWS
• The Western Business Roundtable has filed comments with the USFWS strongly opposing this listing. You can see them here: http://www.westernroundtable.com/ESA/WBRT_Comments_ESA_PolarBear_03-23-07.pdf
• We also filed comments to the Secretary of the Interior regarding an Administrative Procedures Act petition by environmental activists to regulate the impact of global warming to species under the Endangered Species Act You can see those comments here: http://www.westernroundtable.com/ESA/WBRT_Comments_ESA-APA_03-23-07.pdf, and the attachment also filed: http://www.westernroundtable.com/ESA/ESA_APA_Attachment_1_03-23-07.pdf
===> ACTION ITEM: File comments from your organization opposing this listing. The comment period ends on April 9.
===> ACTION ITEM: Let Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne know of your opposition to the environmental activists' ADA petition.
2) Grassroots Campaign
The Roundtable is joining with our sister non-profit advocacy organizations, the Partnership for America and Americans for American Energy, to wage aggressive grassroots and grasstops campaigns to stop this listing petition.
• Go here to take action now: http://www.partnershipforamerica.org/polar_bear_alert.asp
• Go here to learn more about this issue: http://www.partnershipforamerica.org/ESA/polar_bear_campaign.asp
3) Giving You Tools To Act On Your Own
We will soon send you additional talking points, backgrounders, information sharing tools and a powerful online "Grassroots Power System" website that you can use to help your members submit their own individual comments for the record opposing the polar bear listing. Stay tuned!
Jim Sims
President & CEO
Western Business Roundtable
350 Indiana Street, Suite 640
Golden, CO 80401
office: 303-216-9278
direct: 303-577-4611
fax: 303-496-0334
jim@westernroundtable.com
www.westernroundtable.com
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The Roundtable is a non-profit, 501(c)(6) organization that unites a wide variety of business and industry leaders to work on a bipartisan basis for public policies that promote a common sense balance between economic growth and environmental conservation.