Beacon Street Journal

Although numerous instances abound, perhaps there is no better contemporary example that supports Jefferson’s maxim that, that government is best which governs least, than the recent designation of polar bears as “endangered species.” As George Will derisively notes:

The Interior Department, bound by the Endangered Species Act, has declared polar bears a “threatened” species because they might be endangered “in the foreseeable future,” meaning 45 years. (Note: 45 years ago, the now-long-forgotten global cooling menace of 35 years ago was not yet foreseen.) The bears will be threatened if the current episode of warming, if there really is one, is, unlike all the previous episodes, irreversible, and if it intensifies, and if it continues to melt sea ice vital to the bears, and if the bears, unlike in many previous warming episodes, cannot adapt.

What are the unintended consequences  that might flow from this latest example of legislative folly? Like so much other beneficent legislation enacted with the most noble of intentions, the mandatory classification of polar bears as threatened pursuant to the dictates of the the Endangered Species Act, in conjunction with an expansive interpretation of that law based on the regulations promulgated thereto, could lead to some anomalous results.

Now that polar bears are wards of the government, and now that it is a legal doctrine that humans are responsible for global warming, the Endangered Species Act has acquired unlimited application. Anything that can be said to increase global warming can — must — be said to threaten bears already designated as threatened.

Want to build a power plant in Arizona? A building in Florida? Do you want to drive an SUV? Or leave your cell phone charger plugged in overnight? Some judge might construe federal policy as proscribing these activities. Kempthorne says such uses of the act, unintended by those who wrote it in 1973, would be “wholly inappropriate.” But in 1973, climate Cassandras were saying that “the world’s climatologists are agreed” that we must “prepare for the next ice age” (Science Digest, February 1973). And no authors of the Constitution or the Fourteenth Amendment intended to create a “fundamental” right to abortion, but there it is.

Thus, public policy decisions would be transferred over to federal judges, who in their supra-legislative capacity, could thwart, parry and stymie any human activity that uses a molecule of carbon and which might impair the polar bears welfare. Perhaps this seems far-fetched but recall the expansive effect over time of two examples of historic legislation: Affirmative Action and The American With Disabilities Act (“ADA”). A review of the Congressional Record reveals that during debate on the sweeping Affirmative Action Legislation, Hubert Humphrey earnestly pleaded with some of his sceptical Senate colleagues that the proposed bill would not degenerate into “quota” legislation. Whatever the original intention of that legislation, the reality is that today, Hubert Humphrey’s prior pleas to the contrary, Affirmative Action effectively mandates quotas.

The ADA has been similarly expanded to include new classes of “disabilities” that those who enacted the original legislation never contemplated. The unwarranted proliferation in statutory disabilities for purposes of being covered by the ADA, has been burdensome and has led to an increase in liability exposure for many businesses as the concept of “reasonable accommodation” has been twisted beyond its original statutory purpose.

Environmental legislation and regulations have similar unintended consequences many of which will impose severe restrictions on the conduct of individuals in a free society. Environmental radicalism, of which global warming hysteria and fanaticism is but an offshoot, has its philosophical roots in collectivist political theory. But unlike classical Marxism, which postulated the inexorable “withering away of the state”, the dictates of environmental radicalism require an ever-expanding state with unlimited powers to quash and suppress individual action purportedly not for the benefit of a commiserated proletariat, but for the welfare of the planet. As Will reminds us:

The green left preaches pessimism: Ineluctable scarcities (of energy, food, animal habitats, humans’ living space) will require a perpetual regime of comprehensive rationing. The green left understands that the direct route to government control of almost everything is to stigmatize, as a planetary menace, something involved in almost everything — carbon.

As gas prices increase to $4 a gallon in time for the Memorial Day weekend, people should be reminded that Democrats think that these examples of legislative paralysis and absurdity are just fine. In fact, they want more of the same. When gas reaches $12 a gallon, perhaps they will revisit the wisdom of a political party that believes that even more government is the optimal solution to our energy needs.

Update: Perhaps there is hope after all, thanks to the courage of some Republicans (McCain notwithstanding) with a spine…

Also of note: scepticism by reputable and renowned scientists of Al “the science is settled” Gore’s theory of global warming is becoming more pronounced with each passing day.

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin