polar bears

interior secretary dirk kempthorne, you are a douchebag. i don't even care how little control you had over the decision; your so fervently speaking on its behalf is quite sufficient to deem you worthy of being sent to the corner stool to baste in shame.

dirk: arctic sea ice is essential to polar bear survival. sea ice has melted in recent decades. computer models say that it is likely to recede more in the near future. therefore, melting sea ice is linked to global climate change and is a threat to the polar bear species.

natalie: thank you sir, for that illuminating gesture of disclosure.

[note: there was a subtext to this in which he more or less said that computer models don't necessarily predict the future, they're just tools for analyzing possibilities so we shouldn't jump to the assumption that polar bears are endangered based on climate change models. well yeah, jackass, there is no medical cure that is 100% correct, there is no scientific analysis that is 100% fool-proof, there are no political policies that are so thorough in content and application that they outlast time. we still use these tools to make predictions because they are the best we can do without being omniscient. if we don't employ action to exercise what we do know, what is the point of knowing it? we might as well just sit around and wait to rot. but, i digress...]

environmentalists shouldn’t use this threatened species status to force govt action on climate change, our man so adamantly declared immediately following this announcement. to be fair, what he really said was, "we need to reduce avoidable losses of polar bears, but this should not open the door to use ESA [endangered species act] to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, power plants and other sources." come on. are you serious? so then how, my gentle snowflake, do you propose we go about "avoiding the loss" if we're not using the loss to entice the govt to protect what we're losing?

there must be something i'm missing here...

essentially what he’s saying is, we’re going to say this animal is threatened, but we’re not taking responsibility for it, and we sure as hell aren’t going to change our behavior to protect it. doesn’t that seem a little retarded? i consider myself fairly informed as far as climate change activists go – meaning i actually know what i’m lobbying or campaigning for when i’m doing it, and have a personal crafted investment doing so – and still i seem to be missing the key constructive benefit of dirk’s caveat. and yes, we are on a first name basis because he is an ass hole.

someone clearly needs to explain to me the purpose of listing polar bears as threatened if the statement specifically prohibits using this categorization to impact the decisions of the energy industry. it just seems like that particular caveat nullifies the entire purpose of listing the animal in the first place.

stepping back a piece, the reason i got into this battle had nothing to do with saving the polar bears or penguins – they just happen to be the poster children of the environmental crisis. i got into this with the hope that dealing with this umbrella issue (being human-induced/exacerbated/whathaveyou climate change) would enable us to simultaneously ameliorate its effects on poverty stricken regions who are in such condition because climate change is dramatically increasing the agricultural devastation caused by their monsoon season... or forcing them to cross borders in illegal migration to escape deadly drought and heat wave. my concern is that most of the American public does not seem to understand that this issue goes beyond polar bears. which on the one hand pisses me off, but on the other i am very aware of the fact that if people are not already invested in the severity of the climate crisis, polar bears and penguins are needed to reel in their emotional speculation.

which brings me to summarizing why i’m pissed off at dirk (which i've more or less already stated): you cannot “avoid the loss of the polar bear species” unless you protect its habitat. you cannot protect its habitat unless you fight greenhouse gas and other environmentally unfriendly emissions. and you sure as fuck cannot fight emissions without approaching the govt about setting caps, limiting consumption, transitioning away from dirty energy and responding to the ESA.

so explain to me the purpose of declaring polar bears "threatened" if you are going to include a clause specifically preventing the world from protecting them.