A glacial response on polar bears

THE POLAR BEAR is now officially a "threatened" species under U.S. law, thanks to global warming's effects on Arctic ice. Unfortunately, that designation may well be meaningless because of the Bush administration's novel understanding of the Endangered Species Act, precedent and its obligation to the planet.

In virtually every other case, when an animal is determined to be "threatened" or "endangered," the U.S. government steps in to protect it. The problem, for the polar bear, is that this White House believes protecting the species would be too hard - politically, economically, practically.

The bear's sea ice habitat is under threat because it is melting, making this the first time an animal has been declared "threatened" because of global warming. That means the only real way to ensure the survival of the world's 25,000 bears is to stop people from burning so much fossil fuel, a fact that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne called "a unique conservation challenge."

And so the Interior Department, which had to be sued before it did anything at all about the polar bear's future, voluntarily and with all speed set about ensuring that its historic declaration would be functionally feckless.

Even as he warned that his department's designation would do little to actually protect the bear, Kempthorne assured the business community that it would be no barrier to coal-burning power plants or drilling for oil in Arctic waters, or off the coast of Virginia.

"I want to make clear that this listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting," said Kempthorne. "...The ESA is not the right tool to set U.S. climate policy."

That would be a bigger issue, of course, if the United States actually had a climate policy.

"They're trying to make this a threatened listing in name only with no change in today's impacts, and that's not going to fly," said Jamie Rappaport Clark, a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and now with Defenders of Wildlife.

Clark is wrong. This sort of bureaucratic behavior will almost certainly fly, if only because it takes so long for the courts to act, and because the Bush administration has a few more months to drag its feet.