Polar bears gain Threatened Status; really gain nothing

May 15, 2008   by Jozef Winter

Yesterday the Department of the Interior, who has been procrastinating for several years now regarding the status of the polar bear, finally announced that the animal will be officially listed as ‘threatened’ under the Endangered Species Act. The DOI has been pressured by vigorous activist and environmental groups to list the bear under the Act, and they may trumpet this news as a great victory, but unfortunately, it is a hollow one.

While the great animal, a recent icon in the fight against global warming, will be protected in some ways, an exemption has been put in place, removing some of the vital protection granted under the Act. Under the Act, federal agencies must ensure that nothing will “jeopardize the continued existence” of the animals it protects, but clearly this won’t be happening here. While the department admits that global warming is causing the destruction of the polar bears habitat and consequently leading to their starvation and death, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne says that there is no scientific way to connect greenhouse gases from their site of production to the harm of the polar bears. In other words, it’s not OUR greenhouse gases that is harming the bears’ habitat, it’s someone else’s. ….?…. I frankly do not know what to say to this.

The exemption, which also removes any accountability and need to address the impact of global warming on the polar bear, and forbids the Act to be used to help change US policy on global warming, allows energy companies to continue with business as usual, and Kempthorne even says “this rule, effective immediately, will ensure the protection of the bear while allowing us to continue to develop our natural resources in the arctic region in an environmentally sound way.”

So it would seem that the bears are still up the ice floe. Remember that when you go to the polls this fall.