It’s not what you think. It’s worse:
The Trump administration plans to convene the so-called God Squad, a high-level federal panel that has the power to override protections under the Endangered Species Act, for a meeting related to oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico.
The meeting, scheduled for March 31, will be the first time in three decades that the group, officially called the Endangered Species Committee, will gather.
Notice of the meeting was released on Friday and officially published in the Federal Register on Monday. The Gulf, which the administration calls the Gulf of America, is home to the critically endangered Rice’s whale, a species that exists nowhere else. According to the latest available federal estimates, around 50 of the animals remain on Earth.
Information in the notice announcing the meeting, called by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, is sparse.
“The Committee is meeting regarding an exemption under the Endangered Species Act with respect to oil and gas exploration, development, and production activities in the Gulf of America associated with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Program,” the notice states.
When emailed for additional information on what had prompted the move, the Interior Department declined to directly answer questions and repeated the published information. But President Trump has wanted the God Squad to convene since he returned to office last year.
Here’s the story of the God Squad from Wikipedia. It long predates Trump which just goes to show you that this level of cruelty and stupidity has been with us a long time:
The 1978 amendment to the ESA “attempts to retain the basic integrity of the ESA, while introducing some flexibility which will permit exemptions from the Act’s stringent requirements.” The amendment clarified the ESA of 1973 in many ways, including clearly defining the term critical habitat, clearly defining penalties for non-compliance and determining the future appropriation of funds. The most important change that was brought about by the 1978 amendment was the creation of the Endangered Species Committee, known as the “God Squad” because of the substantial impact of its decisions on the natural world.
The God Squad is a committee composed of seven Cabinet-level members: The administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the administrator of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, a representative from the state in question, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of the Army, and the Secretary of the Interior. This committee has the authority to allow the extinction by exempting a federal agency from Section 7 requirements. To exempt a species, five of the seven members must vote in favor of the exemption. The following conditions must be met for a species to be considered for exemption:
- there must be no reasonable alternative to the agency’s action
- the benefits of the action must outweigh the benefits of an alternative action where the species is conserved
- the action is of regional or national importance
- neither the federal agency or the exemption applicant made irreversible commitment to the resources.
Just imagine what the freak show of a cabinet we have now will do with this.
By the way, this is the horror you’re greeted with at all the government web sites:
It is NOT the Gulf of America and it never will be. I don’t know how we have just let these atrocities add up one after the other but it’s going to take a full-blown demolition team to get rid of it all. And God help them if they fail to do it.