More protection, less red tape

0 Comments | USA TODAY, August, 2008 | by Dirk Kempthorne

Americans overwhelmingly support the conservation of endangered species. That's why Congress passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973.

Congress, however, never intended this law to be the solution to global climate change. The law is already a complex source of red tape and litigation. The possibility of it becoming a tool for greenhouse-gas oversight -- as a consequence of the polar bear listing in May -- threatened to overwhelm agency experts and do more harm than good to the cause of conservation.

So the Interior Department recently proposed common-sense regulations that would prevent the law's consultation process from becoming a back-door mechanism to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Under the proposal, when there is no direct link between emissions from a...