Polar Bears in Peril (Column: 1/9/07)

They're big... very big. They look cuddly, from a distance. The young ones, especially. The mothers and cubs play together in ways that seem almost human-like, at times. But they're massive and lethal killing machines, especially if you're a seal. Even if you're not, you might find yourself being mistaken for food: they've attacked humans, and human structures and settlements, before. And in order to survive, they need sea ice -- a lot of it.

"They" are polar bears: the biggest, most powerful ursines on the planet. And in a remarkable decision with far-reaching implications, the Bush administration has requested that they be listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, on the grounds that their sea-ice hunting grounds are shrinking dramatically due to global warming.

The reason for the requested listing was very specific and categorical; other threats -- including the possibility of over-hunting, oil exploration, and pollution -- were explored, but ruled out as major threats to the bears' future well-being. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, an agency of the Department of the Interior, global warming leading to the melting of sea ice is the issue.

Coming from this administration, that admission is startling, if not stunning. If nothing else, it should serve as a shot across the bows of the few remaining flat-earthers who don't believe global warming is a real problem. And it may well place the U.S. government in the position of being required, by its own laws and regulations, to make a genuine effort to reduce carbon emissions from factories, power plants, and motor vehicles: something it has resisted doing for the last six years.

Polar bears are what ecologists call an "indicator species" -- an improbably large "canary in the coal mine," that lets us know when things are getting dangerously out of balance. And they are. Ironically but tellingly, shortly after this announcement came the news that a huge ice-shelf, 43 square miles in area and 3,000 years old, had broken off from Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. We are clearly approaching, if indeed we are not already in, a crisis. In fact, a recent report by British climate scientists suggests that 2007 may be the warmest year yet. It's not just the polar bears, either: warming temperatures could result in a major die-back of northern boreal forests, releasing still more carbon into the air and exacerbating the problem.

Warming trends have appeared in the earth's past, and it is tempting to dismiss the current situation as yet another of these normal fluctuations. But never before in the past have human beings been pumping so much CO2 into the atmosphere: mostly from burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal, themselves made largely of previously-sequestered carbon, and also from clearing forests, which would otherwise absorb and neutralize carbon.

Whether we are the sole cause of the problem or not (and there is some evidence that we would actually be in a global cool spell, were it not for human-generated greenhouse gases), it seems clear that we are at least contributing to it. It would be smart to scale back, and do it dramatically: what a recent Washington Post editorial called "buying insurance." "It's worth paying to limit carbon emissions now,” the authors note, "in case the more pessimistic climate projections are accurate."

But CO2 emissions and carbon sequestration are abstract, theoretical concepts for many people. Polar bears forced to swim in open water and drowning, or dying of malnutrition, are a graphic demonstration that something is out of kilter. They are perhaps the ultimate charismatic megafauna: big, attractive animals that direct people's attention to environmental problems.

The peril of the polar bears may serve as a wake-up call, not only for the current administration, but for the human population at large. It should. "The science is extraordinarily clear: global warming in the Arctic threatens polar bears," Kassie Siegel, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity based in Tucson, Arizona, told CNN. "We can't save polar bears without the reduction of greenhouse gases."

We are long overdue for a serious national conversation on the subject of global warming, and our contribution to it. Beyond mere conversation, we need to set specific, tangible, and effective goals, and plans for how to attain them. Listing polar bears as threatened would be a good start. That something must be done is plain: the plight of these Arctic ursines is proof, and the Bush administration clearly knows it.