Monday editorial: Canary on an ice floe
Caught between a federal judge’s order and a mountain of accumulating scientific evidence, the Bush administration reluctantly listed polar bears as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. But the administration pointedly refuses to address the threat that imperils the bears and the rest of us: global climate change caused by the unchecked release of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane.
A federal judge had ordered the Bush administration to rule on the bears’ status under the law no later than Thursday. But while the administration acknowledged that arctic ice floes vital to the bears’ survival are receding, it insisted that oil and gas exploration should proceed in the Arctic.
It was just the latest twist on the long-running delaying game that’s played out since President George W. Bush took office. Few people may remember, but as a candidate, he promised to limit emissions of greenhouse gases. Not only did Mr. Bush renege, but he also blocked international attempts to limit carbon emissions.
Fortunately, the long stall is running out of steam. All three leading presidential candidates — including Republican Sen. John McCain, whom Mr. Bush has endorsed — have called for caps on carbon dioxide emissions. Campaigning in the Pacific Northwest last week, Mr. McCain reminded voters that he’s no newcomer to global warming.
Mr. McCain has sponsored bills that call for mandatory emission limits that would be achieved through a “cap-and-trade” system, which creates a market for rights to release greenhouse gases. A global warming bill he supported last year was co-sponsored by Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, his Democratic opponents.
That means the next president, whoever he or she is, will make a welcome break from Mr. Bush’s extreme policy of denial and delay.
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who signed the order listing polar bears as threatened, said he was compelled to act by “the scientific record and the restraints of the inflexible law that guides me.”
He warned that the Endangered Species Act “is not the right tool to set U.S. climate change policy.”
Mr. Kempthorne is correct. The right tool is a president and Congress that understand the threat and take constructive action. But that hasn’t happened, in large part because of resistance from members of Mr. Kempthorne’s own Republican party.
Some extremists argue even now that polar bears aren’t really threatened because bear populations in Norway are increasing. But they are decreasing in Canada’s western Hudson Bay, and federal scientists say bear populations in Alaska’s southern Beaufort Sea mirror that decline. Northern latitudes are warming twice as fast as the rest of the world — faster, even, than the most aggressive scientific models predict.
Anti-environmental extremists have held sway over the past eight years, denying the reality of global climate change. Now, the evidence is undeniable. We ignore it at the polar bears’ peril, and our own.
Typical PD excrement! The author used the word “extremist” twice when referring to sensibal people who have not bought into the global warming hoax, but never used that word to describe the global warming “extremists” that aren’t going to stop until everyone does what they say and they have destroyed our country. My first suggestion would be to stop the presses and discontinue newspapers and magazines wasting our trees on their idiocy.