Posted on 01/02/2007 1:38:53 PM PST by jazusamo
T he big, strong and beloved polar bear may at last achieve what thousands of scientists, economists, diplomats, conservationists and others have failed to accomplish: Persuade the Bush administration to respond to global warming.
Bush's U.S. Interior Department announced Dec. 27 that it is proposing to add polar bears to the list of threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. By acknowledging that the polar bear literally is on thin ice, the Bush administration has at last been required to make a completely scientific pronouncement on global warming.
For six years now the Bush administration has feinted and dodged from its responsibilities on climate change. It withdrew President Clinton's approval of the Kyoto Accord, secretly watered down research on global warming and deliberately sowed doubt about minor uncertainties in the science to undermine states' and other nations' responses to climate change.
The administration also has consistently refused to require the auto and trucking industries to curtail the greenhouse gas emissions that an overwhelming number of scientists assert are the major cause of global warming. The White House has actively tried to stop the states, including Oregon, from adopting stricter tailpipe standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But not even the Bush administration can ignore the melting of the Arctic sea ice, or stomach the awful image of polar bears drowning in the open ocean, far from the nearest pack ice.
Polar bears are clearly in trouble, and so are other species, such as penguins, that depend on the same habitat. Experts on polar bears say that the adults they see are noticeably thinner, the mortality of cubs is much higher, and a few starving bears have even resorted to killing and eating other bears.
It will be at least a year before all the public hearings and environmental analyses are done and the federal government may formally add the polar bear to the Endangered Species List. But if and when that happens, there should be no more hiding from the responsibility to address global warming.
The Endangered Species Act requires decisions to be made "solely on the best available scientific information." The Bush administration never yet has been willing to make any global-warming decision on that basis.
But now it will have no choice. If the polar bear is listed as threatened, the government is bound by law to protect the bears -- and the polar ice they require to survive.
The polar bear population is going UP not down.
Surely they do, in a zoo. maybe in circuses, too.
How about this?
"A U.S. based environmental magazine that both former Vice President Al Gore and PBS newsman Bill Moyers, for his October 11th global warming edition of “Moyers on America” titled “Is God Green?” have deemed respectable enough to grant one-on-one interviews to promote their projects, is now advocating Nuremberg-style war crimes trials for skeptics of human caused catastrophic global warming."
http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568
"One Australian columnist has proposed outlawing ‘climate change denial’. ‘David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial’, she wrote. ‘Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence. It is a crime against humanity, after all."
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/1782/
The day could very well come where debating global warming could land someone in prison.
"The big, strong and beloved polar bear may at last achieve what thousands of scientists, economists, diplomats, conservationists and others have failed to accomplish: Persuade the Bush administration to respond to global warming."
The Democrats control Congress. It's their decision. Put up or shut up.
If every car, power plant and human being were vaporized, the Earth would still be warming. The polar bears, if they cannot shift habitats, will not survive.
The trick is to use the aerosol cans, not the pump... :)
Aren't most 4 year old boys "experts" on polar bears?
I didn't know Oregon had polar bears........
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They don't silly. That's why they're endangered.
LOL!
Now **that's** a polar bear expert...
"The Senate vote on the protocol was 95-0."
Not quite but close. The Senate voted on a "sense of the senate" sort of vote , that's the 95-0.
Seeing the lack (total, there were 5 either absent or abtaining) Clinton decided not to send it down for ratification. It was never put to the vote.
Some future prexy can send it down, though, which is why Clinton did not try.
We need to chase them all out onto the ice which is their natural year-round habitat. Somebody call Nancy, let's squeeze this into the first 100 hours Symbol Over Substance agenda.
AFAIK, Clinton signed the thing, the bloody idiot did. However, the Senate voted 95-0 to not even consider it for ratification.
Or one reinstating the 55-mph speed limit.
For them, pack ice is simply a convenient platform to get at more marine animals further from shore. They don't even need it to survive. Of course, I don't think pack ice is ever going to go away.
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