Hearing of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming - On Thin Ice: The Future of the Polar Bear

Interview

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REP. EMANUEL CLEAVER (D-MO): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I must express some resentment at those of you speaking about the Super Bowl. In fact, I think we need to have some congressional hearings. Just because the Kansas City Chiefs lost the last nine games is no reason to prevent them from playing in the Super Bowl. (Laughter.) And I just don't think this is democracy. (Laughter.)

Having said that --

REP. MARKEY: The polar bears of the NFL.

REP. CLEAVER: Yes. Yeah. (Laughter, moans.)

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

A short statement and I'm interested in the opinions of the witnesses. The strange thing about all of this is even if we don't drill in Alaska, I think most of the scientific community would agree that continuing to burn fossil fuel does in fact put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and if there are more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the temperature of the Earth will rise. If the temperature of the Earth rises, the ice will melt.

And so I think that even if you don't want to accept this as a current problem, just accepting the fact that fossil fuel creates greenhouse gas shows that there's a problem.

And I guess the delight for me today is that one of the polar bears came, and they think that it's wrong to drill.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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REP. CLEAVER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Hall -- Mr. Luthi first -- are you familiar with the USS Arizona?

MR. LUTHI: To some degree, yes, sir.

REP. CLEAVER: It went down Pearl Harbor, one of I think nine ships that went down in the attack. Have you ever gone there in Pearl Harbor to see the ship, which is on the bottom, but there's been an area where people can walk over and actually look down in the water and see the remains?

MR. LUTHI: Unfortunately, I've not been able to see that personally, Congressman Cleaver.

REP. CLEAVER: Each day when thousands of people go over -- it's actually the number one tourist attraction in Hawaii oddly -- oil is bubbling up out of the Arizona every single day, 60 years later -- 60 years later. You can see it on the water and it's just laying on the water and you can see it bubbling. It is amazing that it's continuing this long, and so I watched it last week and realized the lasting impact on oil spills and what it does to the environment and to the animals and species that are impacted.

I'm also wondering -- this is a difficult question; I hope it's fair -- do you think that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is strictly dealing with fish and wildlife or does it get into ideological issues as it looks at fish and wildlife issues? Any of you.

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MR. HALL: Over my 29 years with the Fish and Wildlife Service, I think I can speak with some confidence that our employees approach work from, number one, trying to be a professional and, number two, trying to be honest about what we know and don't know, and as I spoke earlier in all science there's a lot we don't know, but we have to deal with it.

But as far as being ideological, I believe the vast majority of our employees, and I'm one of those, believes that we should be advocates for truth, whatever that is, and if the truth means that there is an impact, we need to say that, and if the truth means there isn't, we need to say that, because I think the public depends upon us to be as honest in our disclosures as we possibly can be.

REP. CLEAVER: I appreciate that.

MR. HALL: If that's the ideology you're talking about, then --

REP. CLEAVER: Well, yes. Not completely, but I mean, when we begin to discuss this issue, global warming, endangered species, quite often we get into an ideological discussion that has to do with, you know, free commerce and government intervention into business and that kind of thing, and so there's a whole bit of resistance to the acceptance of the science based on ideology and not science.

So but dealing with the whole issue of receiving the facts and dealing with them honestly, is there any doubt in your mind at this point that the habitat of the polar bear has been damaged?

MR. HALL: Well, I think there is a difference between has been. We've certainly lost 20 percent, but the decision that we're trying to make and will make will be over the foreseeable future, will actually would take us out to mid-century as well. And we know based upon the science that the habitat is leaving us. So there is no doubt that that is happening.

REP. CLEAVER: So what is the problem?

MR. HALL: There is a lot of -- you know, I'll try to say this and perhaps I'm not being clear. It's not just making the decision that's important, it's making it clear and why, because we had over 600,000 comments come in, and there were people that didn't agree that the issue you've described is there. There are people that believe that it was. Our responsibility is to answer for everyone that when we have uncertainty that we accept, because we accept some risk in everything, but we explained that.

REP. CLEAVER: But you've already --

MR. HALL: But I want to get to the -- when I release a document with my signature, I want it to be clear.

REP. CLEAVER: Excuse me, my time is running out. But you've already said that you agree with me that the habitat has been damaged. Didn't you say --

MR. HALL: I think that's factual record that we've lost 20 percent of the ice -- I believe it's 20 percent since the '70s roughly, a little more than that. And I think that's scientific --

REP. CLEAVER: How much do we need -- how much do you think we need to lose before we say this isn't -- this is a clear -- you said that you wanted to make sure everything was clear -- that this is a clear problem? Because 20 percent looks clear to me. I mean, if I have $100 and I lost 20 percent, I clearly lost $20.

MR. HALL: Okay, I'm -- maybe I might owe you an apology. I thought you were talking about the listing decision versus a decision that we need to do something about climate change. We need to do something about climate change starting yesterday.

REP. CLEAVER: Yes.

MR. HALL: And it needs to be a serious effort to try and control greenhouse gases, which is probably the only thing we actually can control.

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REP. CLEAVER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It does not happen often that I am in full agreement with our witnesses, but I am today.

But because I didn't get clear answers with the previous panel, I'm interested, Ms. Clark, if you could give us a picture of how the machinery of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service actually functions with regard to the professional staff and then those who are appointed.

My question that I asked -- which may be answered in the next millennium -- earlier is I was interested in whether or not there's political interference, and number one, is it the normal process that the professional staff, the experts, the scientists collect information, make a recommendation then to the director and then those recommendations are acted on? Is that the normal process?

MS. CLARK: Yep. I can share with you how it used to work as I was a long time endangered species biologist before accepting a presidential appointment as director.

During that time, you are right in that, as director, I relied very heavily on the professional staff. They're highly competent, incredibly dedicated, and very capable. And they would conduct all the science and all the kind of analytics. They're closest to the ground, closest to the species, and certainly the most knowledgeable about the scientific effects.

They then make a recommendation that would be moved through the regional office and into Washington. The responsibility of those of us in Washington was to review the science and ensure that it complied with the policy and statutory requirements of, in this case, the Endangered Species Act.

While certainly there's the opportunity for the policymakers -- political appointees -- to come up or to result with a different conclusion than the recommendation of the scientists and biologists, it was absolutely unheard of that the policymakers would change the underlying science.

MS. SIEGEL: Congressman Cleaver?

REP. CLEAVER: Yes?

MS. SIEGEL: I might elaborate a little bit.

Over the past seven years, the Bush administration has essentially shut down the listing program for endangered species.

This administration has listed fewer species than any administration in history, and it's not because of a lack of worthy candidates. Overall, there are 279 species that are official candidates that have been waiting an average of 19 years for protection.

Secretary Kempthorne has gone 617 days without listing a single species under the Endangered Species Act. The second-longest delay in history was in 1981 when then-Secretary of the Interior James Watt went 382 days without listing a species, and in that situation Congress quickly amended the act to include the strict statutory deadlines for listing species that we now have.

We have repeatedly seen political appointees in this administration use delays such as the current delay with the polar bear listing to interfere with the conclusions of service biologists.

One example from a similar situation concerns a species called the California tiger salamander. The service was under a court order to issue a final listing decision for this species and asked the court for more time. This time was then used by the political appointee to overrule the judgment of agency scientists, and the court later ruled that the request for a delay had been used to illegally reduce protection for that species.

Under investigation by Congress and the inspector general, the service has admitted to political interference in seven listing decisions which involved former Assistant Secretary Julie MacDonald, but has not actually committed to correcting this interference. And the Center for Biological Diversity has found evidence of political interference in an additional 55 Endangered Species Act listing decisions that the agency has refused to address.

And this is why we are so concerned with the current delay in the listing decision for the polar bear.

REP. CLEAVER: I think this unanimity, at least on this side, that we do need to act and that the delay is unfortunately politically motivated -- we've seen reports from staff bleached in other areas of our government over the past few years, and so it will not be a shock to see it happen here.

Ms. Williams, my final question: How far can polar bears swim?

MS. WILLIAMS: They can swim long distances; part of it depends on the conditions. But it is important to note that when polar bears swim, they use a lot of energy. They're really designed to swim from iceberg to iceberg or short distances where there's no ice. They're not designed to swim 500 miles, which some of the projections show the ice will be 500 miles offshore and polar bears will have the great challenge of swimming 500 miles from the edge of the ice to come on land to den.

What we found, and it was actually MMS scientists that found that, you know, with diminished ice several years ago -- there was a storm, and they found more and more polar bears in the water as opposed to on ice because there's less ice. And it was those MMS scientists that found the drowned polar bears. And polar bears were drowned after that storm because they didn't have enough ice to rest on and to seek refuge on.

So polar bears can drown when they have too far to swim. They can use too much energy when they have too far to swim. It can affect their denning activities and other activities.

So polar bears, again, were designed biologically to be on ice not swimming on water except for short distances. So the more the ice retreats, the worse it is for polar bears.

And, of course, polar bears swimming through oil -- as we know from a study that was done by a Canadian scientist -- is lethal.

REP. CLEAVER: I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Inslee, but I was trying to make that point earlier and perhaps I didn't make it -- yes, I did. It was clear. (Laughter.)

When we talk about a cleanup of an oil spill, we're not talking about reversing the impact completely of that oil spill. And I was trying to point out that after the USS Arizona was damaged and went under, that 60 years later it's still leaking oil. If you went there today, you'd see oil bubbling up.

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