ViceZilla’s Views

Ask Vice President Dick Cheney what a “No Wake Zone” is, and he’ll probably tell you it’s between the hours of 10 AM and 3 PM when he’s having his daily nap. But when he’s not napping he is studying scientific data on how not to protect whales. And as we all know very well, Cheney works from facts, more facts and nothing but the facts.

So it should come as no surprise that Cheney is preventing the implementation of rules to protect the endangered right whale. In a letter from Henry Waxman to the White House today, he urged the administration to quit delaying the rules which would restrict the speed of ships near American ports, thus lessening the likelyhood of collisions between the vessels and the whales. According to NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), faster moving ships are more likely to hit the whales, causing injury or death.

But according to Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, that is not true, which has resulted in the delay of approving NOAA’s recommendations. Cheney’s office states:

Another internal document shows that the officials working for the Vice President also raised spurious objections to the science. According to this document, the Vice President’s staff “contends that we have no evidence (i.e., hard data) that lowering the speeds of ‘large ships’ will actually make a difference.” NOAA rejected these objections, writing that both a statistical analysis of ship strike records and the peer-reviewed literature justified the final rule. In its response to the objections from the Vice President’s staff, NOAA reported that there is “no basis to overturn our previous conclusion that imposing a speed limit on large vessels would be beneficial to whales.”

Bottom line is, who would be better to listen to regarding the benefits to right whales of lowering the speed of ships near US ports, NOAA, or the Vice President? I’m thinking NOAA knows a hell of a lot more about the situation than Cheney does.

Why Won't Cheney Help Prevent This?

Tags: Bush Administration, But Seriously Though... //