Polar bear pals need to chill

You’d think Interior Secretary Ken Salazar hitched up the sled team Friday to shoot him some polar bear.
Salazar decided to retain a Bush Administration rule that prevents the government from considering greenhouse gas emissions in the Lower 48 and Hawaii in its protection of polar bears in Alaska. Unlike the decision to let endangered-species protection expire for gray wolves—which means that hundreds of wolves will be shot—this decision has no effect on polar bears. None. But you’d never know it.
Under the headline, “Polar bear ruling brings Obama and Palin together like Spring love,” The Christian Science Monitor calls the decision “a slap in the face to many environmentalists.” The Kansas City Star is more precise in its aim, saying the ruling “spits in the eye of global warming believers.”
Greenpeace put a toy polar bear face down in a pond outside the Interior Department—and while that’s the sort of harmless photo op that might raise funds for more useful tactics, like putting boats between whalers and whales—Greenpeace suffered its own meltdown by calling the decision a litmus test that the Administration “failed miserably.”
Polar bears are on thinning ice, and I want to see them thrive as much as the next tree hugger. I also think we should stop contributing to global warming, and once that’s done, stop polluting based on a more unselfish principle. But it only hurts those efforts when we act like knee jerks—when the usual suspects reflexively issue the usual statements, the media incite the discord, and we find ourselves entrenched in the usual trenches, staring at each other across an impassable divide.
The Kansas City Star deceives readers with a headline suggesting the polar bear is now unprotected— “Protect the polar bears? Nope, says Obama” —when, in fact, it retains threatened status. No one in Alaska can harm or imperil a polar bear without risking federal prosecution. According to the Star, Salazar’s decision proves the Obama Administration is not serious about fighting global warming because the Administration’s preferred strategy—comprehensive climate legislation—is a “long shot.” So the Endangered Species Act is a short cut?
The Endangered Species Act protects specific animals from specific threats. The government would have to connect the peril of individual polar bears to the emissions from individual projects from Kilauea to Tallahassee. How likely is that strategy in these United States? Imagine the first lawsuit. Someone wants to open a factory in, say, Texas, creating some number of badly needed jobs, but also some amount of badly unneeded carbon dioxide. The government says no because the factory would kill polar bears.
The would-be factory owner sues. The government would have to prove, most likely in a court with a Bush appointee sitting on the bench, that the Texas factory will “take” a polar bear in Alaska. That’s not only a difficult argument in a court of law, it’s a difficult argument in the court of public opinion. “Save an American,” the bumper stickers will read, “kill a polar bear.” Losing that argument in either kind of court hurts the Endangered Species Act, hurts the effort to prevent global warming, and hurts polar bears.
It also takes the issue out of the Administration’s hands. Salazar:
We must do all we can to help the polar bear recover, recognizing that the greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change. However, the Endangered Species Act is not the proper mechanism for controlling our nation’s carbon emissions. Instead, we need a comprehensive energy and climate strategy that curbs climate change and its impacts — including the loss of sea ice.
Former Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino responded to Salazar’s decision with a “Well now”:
Well now. I remember what happened when we made our announcement…. Where is the outrage and the letters from Senator Boxer and Congressman Waxman decrying the Friday afternoon release, calling for investigations and alleging manipulation of the science and the law? Where are the press releases and lawsuits from the environmental groups? Where are the two people who dressed up as polar bears and crashed Sen. Kempthorne’s press conference? Where are the breathless and indignant above-the-fold, page one newspaper stories? And the cute photos of the polar bears standing on floating ice floes?
Perino spoke too soon, because much of that outrage has materialized, but she is right about one thing: it’s disconcerting to see the Administration in fleeting agreement with the likes of Sarah Palin (who tweeted her approval), the Editorial Bored at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (who called it sensible), or any of the oil junkies in the Bush Administration. But while the rule remains the same, it has a different context in 2009 than it had in 2008.
In 2008 it was part of a strategy of global warming denial, avoidance, and exacerbation. In 2009, it’s part of a strategy that has already done more to address climate change than has ever been done before, some of it in the stimulus bill, some of it in the budget, some of it in regulation: establishment of carbon dioxide as a pollutant, stricter fuel-efficiency standards for cars and ships, unprecedented funding for energy efficiency, alternative energy, high-speed rail, green buildings, hybrid cars….
When this Administration says it has a better approach to climate change, it might. If it finds lifting the rule unhelpful, maybe that’s because it is unhelpful. It can revisit the rule if polar bears take a sudden turn, or if the Administration becomes empowered by science or politics to prove the causal connection between the peril of individual polar bears and the emissions from individual projects from Kilauea to Tallahassee.
When Greenpeace urges people to “Call Sec. Salazar and tell him you are disappointed he has caved to industry pressure,” it doesn’t help polar bears. It just makes Dana Perino happy.
So cool your jets, polar bear fans. Put it on ice.