Of Polar Bears and Bare Poles

It seems that polar bears aren’t the only critters emerging from hibernation. The left-wing, tree-hugging, granola-crunching, SUV-eschewing, “greenies” are out in full force as the Anchorage Daily News showcases in this piece: http://www.adn.com/opinion/view/story/418962.html

At question is why the polar bear recently found its genus included on the Endangered Species List. The answer lies with the “greenies” who decided that because polar ice is shrinking (doesn’t it always shrink in the Spring and Summer months?), a flawed computer projection showed that polar bears might become threatened (are you ready for this…) by the year 2045.

The Governor of Alaska, Mrs. Sarah Palin, is objecting to this recent nonsense because she is wisely looking out for her state’s economy, specifically the oil and gas industry. She is worried that this latest bureaucratic stalemate might result in loss of revenue for those interested in investing in Alaska’s vast petroleum caches located in prime polar bear habitat.

Of course, it would never occur to the “greenies” to do some simple math and count the number of polar bears in this area, they are only interested in what might happen in the future. On May 15^th, the Wall Street Journal reported quite accurately in an Op-Ed piece (page A16), that polar bear numbers are on the rise- not the other way around. In the 1960’s, bear counts hovered around 12,000. Today, that number stands close to 25,000 - perhaps a record high since records have been kept. Mind you, I was not a stellar math student in high school, but even I can draw a sensible conclusion now and then.

The WSJ editorial department had this to say about the recent Endangered Species Act ruling: “The lawsuits were hardly motivated by concern for polar bear welfare. Instead, the environmentalists asserted that the ice is thinning because of human-induced global warming. A formal endangered listing is one more arrow in their legal quiver as they try to run U.S. climate policy through the judiciary.”

The “greenies” love to point their fingers and accuse the Right of being extremists in environmental policy. The primary author of the ESA petition listing had this to say in response to Governor’s Palin calm, sensible solution: "She's either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading, and both are unbecoming," said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Alaska deserves better. . .even the Bush administration can't deny the reality of global warming," she said. "The governor is aligning herself and the state of Alaska with the most discredited, fringe, extreme viewpoints by denying this."

Discredited? Fringe? Extreme? - Now if that ain’t the pot calling the kettle black…

-TMS