Dec 25, 2010

Obama hesitates to call polar bears endangered species



Pressure from corporate polluters may be causing the Obama Administration to keep from changing the protection status of polar bears form threatened to endangered.

“A change from threatened to endangered status “would have profound consequences,” said Richard Ranger, senior policy advisor for the American Petroleum Institute, a lead litigant on the industry side,” according to The Los Angeles Times.

Climate change is at the heart of the debate over the fate of the polar bear. The ice sheets they call home are rapidly shrinking, and with them go the polar bear’s ability to hunt and breed.

If polar bears were declared an endangered species, the companies responsible for polluting the environment and increasing greenhouse gases would be forced by law to comply with stiffer regulations. That would cost them money, which in turn, may cut their profits.

According to The LA Times, “There is a pronounced push-back from industry because they rightly see that they will have to modify or mitigate their activities to comply with the laws,” said Andrew Wetzler, director of the Land and Wildlife program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the groups suing to change the polar bear’s status to endangered.”

The battle over greenhouse gasses and climate change is about more than preserving animals like the polar bear; it’s about corporate profits versus anything that stands in their way. In this case, that includes the polar bear.

It’s difficult to image a world without polar bears. They have been an icon of the arctic and featured in children's stories for centuries. If they lose this battle, the next generation may only know them as another animal that went extinct. And when a child asks, ‘what happened to the polar bears?’ the only answer we will be able to give them is, we let them die because we didn’t have the political strength to save them.


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