polar bears, Bush, and Obama

I just read an article on TIME’s website that talked about how, after a study in 2007 by the U.S. Geological Survey said that two-thirds of polar bears would die out by the 2050s if Arctic ice kept melting, the Bush Administration finally agreed to list the bears as a threatened species, in accordance with the Endangered Species Act. This should have been great, a huge victory for environmentalists- because the ESA says the government has to protect any animals on the list from hazards, which would seemingly mean that the government would finally put in efforts to reduce carbon emissions, which of course is what is causing the Arctic ice to melt in the first place.

But, of course, the Bush Administration, ignoring global warming yet again, decided that the ESA could only have so much influence over the control of carbon emissions, and decided to implement a rule that says as much.

When the Obama Administration decided to look back at all the last-minute changes the previous Administration made to the ESA, they decided to keep the rule in place, because, as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, “When the ESA was passed, it was not contemplated it would be a tool to address the issue of climate change.”

And that actually makes sense. Salazar’s point is that even though, yes, climate change is causing the ice to melt, which is exactly what is killing the polar bears (since they do their hunting on the ice, when there is none they starve), the ESA doesn’t have the right to cap carbon emissions, even though that needs to be done. When the ESA was passed, in 1973, I don’t even know that the average person knew anything about depletion of the ozone layer, and now every lesson in my science class goes right back to the effect humans have had on the environment. Hopefully Obama and Salazar, and everyone else in the Administration can work something out that will have a positive impact on the polar bears, and finally start to tackle the issue of global climate change.

~ by skdunning on 9 May, 2009.