Mother Jones has a troubling piece about the plans that conservative groups are hatching to face down an endangered species designation for the polar bear - a designation which has been in the works for some years now.It works like this: Business groups argue that since polar bears are affected by climate change, a successful designation could leave any number of carbon polluters liable to enforcement under the act's provisions - an outcome which environmental groups see as highly desirable. Carefully chosen plaintiffs, supported by the business side, will claim that an endangered designation for the white bears would bring up energy prices, which are disproportionately borne by poor people ($4/gallon gas hurts a lot more when you're making minimum wage).
Never mind that the planned lawsuits would be financed by groups that are more interested in their own profits than in the poor people in question (since when did Exxon/Mobil give a darn about the underprivileged?) There's also the fact that the disruption caused by long-term climate change will, of course, disproportionately affect poor people (as these protesting polar bears from Oxfam remind us), but you don't see the American Petroleum Institute standing up for them on that front...
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