BushCo lies continue even with a new presidnet.

Gale Norton has no shame, it's obvious; Dirk Kempthorne is not a whole lot better:

Norton said the Bush administration focused primarily on onshore drilling and that there "was really not much change as to the outer continental shelf."

Henry Waxman gets it right, including not giving Team Obama a pass:

The Interior Department under both Bush and Obama made serious mistakes, Waxman said.

"The cop on the beat was off duty for nearly a decade," he said. "And this gave rise to a dangerous culture of permissiveness."

Recommendations by Cheney's energy task force and Norton's failure to act on safety warnings about blowout preventers and rejection of proposals to strengthen standards for cementing wells sent a clear message that "the priority was more drilling first, safety second," Waxman said.

Kempthorne oversaw the "deeply flawed assessment" of potential environmental impacts of the lease sale, and MMS's mission became "to serve the oil and gas industry," he added. But Congress "was complicit in this lack of oversight," failing to strengthen regulatory requirements, Waxman said.

"As a Democrat, I hoped the Obama administration would do better and, in some ways, there have been reforms," Waxman said. "But there is little evidence that these reforms changed the laissez-faire approach of MMS in regulating the BP well."

U.S. protection for polar bears not enough

After all, two-thirds of them live in Canada, and Canada needs to do its part, as DeSmog Blog notes.

That said, the ruling does do something. Despite Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne’s denial that the Endangered Species Act can be a tool to tackle global warming, despite his attempts to loophole around that, we now have something in writing.

And, while the “threatened” status of the ESA doesn’t have a lot of teeth, should this, as is likely, not have enough force and polar bears soon become “endangered,” there’s a lot more legal teeth there.

Follow the links at the top story webpage for all the details about Interior Department loopholes in polar bear protection, too.

Interior does SORTA right by polar bears — finally

The Department of the Interior has listed polar bears as a threatened species. Of course, the official listing was full of denialism:

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne cited dramatic declines in sea ice over the last three decades and projections of continued losses, meaning, he said, that the polar bear is a species likely to be in danger of extinction in the near future.

But Kempthorne said it would be “wholly inappropriate” to use the protection of the bear to reduce greenhouse gases, or to broadly address climate change.

So, Arctic sea ice is melting of its own free will, then?

At the same time, Kempthorne was not able to totally deny global warming:

“This listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting,” said Kempthorne. He said he had consulted with the White House on the decision, but “at no time was there ever a suggestion that this was not my decision.”

And, Big Oil still lurks in the background.

Kempthorne’s listing has semi-sized loopholes, too, to keep Arctic oil drilling going, and to “protect” power plants.

That’s why he said it would be “wholly inappropriate” to use this to tackle global warming. It also shows just how much he “consulted” with the White House.

And Kempthorne didn’t address why Interior had to be legally prodded into the decision, and the delays it did.