US Industry Challenges "Threatened" Status of Polar Bears

All species are important, but when even the US government, under legal pressure to make a decision which they’d been avoiding, declares this magestic icon of the pristine frozen arctic is at risk you know there is something dreadfully wrong. 

Apparently not everyone’s heart-strings were pulled and energy-saving commitments aroused, however. Five business groups - the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Mining Association and the American Iron and Steel Institute - have filed suit against the Interior Secretary and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director to try and reverse the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species. They join Alaska Governor and now vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s administration which also filed a lawsuit opposing the polar bear’s listing, arguing that their populations as a whole are stable, that melting sea ice does not pose an imminent threat to their survival.

Wishful thinking, at best. Many populations of polar bears are declining already, and the trend is not positive since they depend entirely on intact ice habitat.  Allowing the arctic to melt will serious consequences for global climate, raise sea level and threaten coastal communities, change ocean currents, release even more greenhouse gases, create even more global warming. 

As World Bank economist and special advisor to the UK government Sir Howard Stern concluded (and you don’t have to read the multiple volumes), it is much, much safer and cheaper to avoid dangerous climate change (and at least save some polar bears) than to deal with the consequences, which might not even be physically or financially possible. 

Julia Langer