I caught this briefly on the news last night, and my feeling is that its probably going to be buried behind other news stories. Hence, I am posting this.

Yesterday, it was announced by the Department of the Interior that polar bears should be categorized as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. This announcement came after a coalition of environmental groups successfully sued the government into taking action to protect the polar bears after their numbers have been steadily declining since the 80’s. And why have their numbers been declining? Their natural habitat, the ice of northern regions (includiong Canada, Russia, and Alaska) has been receding (read, melting), forcing them farther inland. The warmer climate has been affecting their health, as well as the survival rate of their cubs.

For all intents and purposes, the Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, acknowledged that the polar bears are being threatened by rising temperatures, but did not so far as to ackowledge the role of global warming, stating that such a call was beyond their capability to make.

This is a small victory, but an important one. While it shows the same guilty, stupid tenacity that the Bush administration has adhered to in its continuous denial of the existence of Global Warming, it is enough of an admission to hopefully pave the way for future change and action in other areas where Global Warming is concerned.

You can read various takes on this story at the Financial Times, Bloomberg, the Gaurdian Unlimited, the Toronto Star, etc…

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 28th, 2006 at 10:37 am and is filed under politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.