by David Chaves

Created on: June 09, 2008

A Polar Shift in Thinking

They are intelligent and beautiful animals. They live in the arctic circle, an area along the front lines of the fight against Global Warming. Polar bears hunt by walking out on the ice sheet. The ice sheets are weaker now than ever before and break off very easily. Now, the polar bear can swim, but when the sea ice breaks off, sometimes they have to swim too far, or maybe they get to the edge only to have it continuously break off as they try to climb back up onto the top. Sounds like a scene out of a Wes craven film doesn't it? Well it happens. Correction: it's happening.

Global Warming is effecting the poles at a more noticeable rate than that of say, Kansas. It's much easier to see in the arctic. The same arctic that has been under fire by BIG OIL and BIG Government, for drilling rights. So they can provide themselves with more profitsoh yeah and get us taxpaying citizens cheaper gas.right? Probably not.

But there is some good news for our northernmost teddy bear friends.

On Wednesday May 15th, after much discussion and debate, the polar bear was officially listed as "Threatened". No shit. I don't know what gave that away. While I will say this is a small step forward, we are in need of a huge jump. The current administration is just too afraid of their corporate sponsors to do the right thing.

The problem with the "threatened" tag as opposed to the "endangered" tag is that "threatened" doesn't prevent drilling and mining practices. It makes them a tiny bit harder. However, to me the real problem is not in the actual decision but in the fact it took nearly 3 years to come to this decision. We have problems that can't wait that long for solutions.

The bad guys (think cheney) think the polar bear population is fine. Apparently a 30% decrease over the next decade or so is acceptable. Canadian wildlife officials say that 4 of 13 polar bears will die if current conditions continue. To me, that's a lot. I think there are grave consequences for not protecting species and areas. Consequences that are bigger than not having enough oil to drill. Because realistically lets face the truth, the only "need" for oil is a need for money by big corporations being lead by people who can't bear (pun intended) to see their profits dip in the slightest.

Now, I'm not nave. I realize that in our economy and lives, oil is central, maybe even critical. But we have reached, no, we have passed the time to do something about that. We have ignored science since the

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