Big Oil Gets Behind McCain's VP on Polar Bear Lawsuit

The Washington Post reports a Big Oil front group is joining John McCain's running mate in trying to strip polar bears of Endangered Species Act protection:

The American Petroleum Institute and four other business groups filed suit Thursday against Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, joining Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's administration in trying to reverse the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species.

The other groups involved in the latest lawsuit are the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Mining Association and the American Iron and Steel Institute. Just despicable.

As a leading advocate of polar bear protection points out, Gov. Palin's stance puts her to the far right of even President Bush:

Kassie Siegel, climate program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which originally petitioned to list the polar bear as an endangered species in 2005, decried the assertion in the Alaska suit that science does not prove polar bear populations are declining. The center is also suing the federal government, seeking to change the polar bear's official status from "threatened" to "endangered."

"The amazing thing about this litigation is that the governor of Alaska is so anti-environmental that she is suing the Bush administration over a claimed overabundance of protections for the polar bear," Siegel said. "It's just amazing."

If you liked the Bush administration's war on science, you'll love Sarah Palin!