Year 2, Month 7, Day 17: And In The Left Corner, In Yellow Trunks…

The L.A. Times reports on the recent (July 1) ruling that the Polar Bear is going to be allowed to keep its status on the Endangered Species list.

A U.S. District Court on Thursday upheld a Bush-era decision that polar bears are a threatened species, despite challenges by the state of Alaska and others seeking to strip the bear of its protection.

Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to protect the bear because of the melting of the Arctic sea ice was well supported and that opponents failed to demonstrate that the listing was irrational.

“Plaintiffs’ challenges amount to nothing more than competing views about policy and science,” Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote.

Them pesky liberal judges.

Personally, I’d like to watch a polar bear and James Inhofe battle it out.

Sent July 1:

As one of the most recognizable of the world’s charismatic megafauna, the polar bear’s become a symbol of wildlife endangered by climate change. While Judge Sullivan’s ruling on the threatened Arctic predator’s status is welcome news, we need to recognize that it’s not just the big, furry and picturesque that need our protection. All over the planet, creatures great and small are coming under attack from a faceless enemy — but the ultimate victims are not the animals and plants themselves, but the living networks of interdependency of which they are a part. The world’s ecosystems are in grave danger; as they lose their resilience, we’ll see ever-greater numbers of inarticulate climate refugees searching for new habitats. It’s unfortunate that there is no category for Endangered Environments, for it’s not just the polar bear, but its entire support system, that is under assault from the greenhouse effect and its consequences.

Warren Senders