Associated Press writer Jeannette J. Lee reported on the pending lawsuit on behalf of America’s poor and minority taxpayers to protect them from the disastrous financial impacts of federal designation of the polar bear as an endangered species (Associated Press, “Group to Sue Over Protection for Polar Bears,” July 31).
Lead plaintiff is venerable civil rights icon Roy Innis, national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). His attorneys at the Pacific Legal Foundation have served the required 60-day notice of intention to file a lawsuit in Sacramento.
CORE is leading a nationwide coalition of civil rights and community activists at rallies and press conferences for a “Stop the War on the Poor” initiative. Innis has argued against the extremists’ position that climate change will destroy polar bear habitat over the next 50 to 100 years. He also points out that restricting access to energy to protect polar bears raises oil and natural gas prices for poor and minority consumers.
BBC News reported earlier that a 130,000-year-old jawbone specimen from a female polar bear uncovered from sediments on the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic “basically means that the polar bear has already survived one interglacial period,” explained Professor Ingolfsson from The University of Iceland.
Polar bears will survive … but can the same be said of America’s poor and minorities, endangered by wrong-headed energy policies?
Ralph W. Conner ([email protected]) is local legislation manager at The Heartland Institute.
