REPORTERS: Somebody leaked an early draft of this administration proposal to us and it says it will let the various federal agencies decide for themselves whether a road or tunnel, or whatever thing they want to build, will put rare wildlife at risk. They won’t have to consult with Fish and Wildlife anymore.

SEN. BARBARA BOXER (D-CALIF): That’s illegal. If you want to do that, you’re going to have to try to hammer legislation through congress.

LOBBYIST FOR DEVELOPERS: We just want to be able to build things faster, and right now it really sucks for us how long we have to wait before we build things.

WILDLIFE CONSERVATION GROUP: If the government lets you do that, bald eagles may die.

DEPT. OF INTERIOR BUSH UNDERLING: We know that secretly this whole wildlife thing you guys are always talking about is actually about curbing carbon emissions. You just want to find a way to help halt global warming by stopping some developments that create emissions. You are obsessed with that or something.

One potential way for greens to stop this proposal would be to try to find a legal basis on which to stall it until later in the year. If we then got Obama, he’d be able to erase the proposed Bush changes no problem because such edicts take a little while to go into effect. But if we got McCain, we’d probably be screwed on this.

Image: flickr/graybeard763

Basically, the G8’s collective enviro vow this year was to adopt and implement laws that would cut carbon emissions in half by 2050. It’s a day late and a dollar short, environmentalists say, and I agree, but since Bush has wriggled his way out of agreeing to any kind of specific resolution about cutting carbon in the past, this is progress.

I mean, the specifics aren’t that specific or anything. It’s left up in the air whether emissions will be cut to half of 2005 levels or half of 1990 levels, for example. And there’s nothing like an outline for which industries would have to step up and take hits and/or change their ways to meet the goals. But the point is, one-half, 2050, these are numbers. It’s sort of a start.

Image: flickr/Jaume D’Urgell