Greens Mount Big Polar Bear Push

It's clearly a case of Greens Gone Wild. From the Center for Biological Depravity Diversity to Al Gore's newbie, We Can Solve It (Cutely, "We" for short), they've all got their electronic petitions and letter-generators going wild, flooding the Dept. of Interior with please to ignore science and buy into hysteria list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act.

"We" is taking a very low key approach, asking folks to sign a petition that says only:

"Mr. Secretary, please ensure that the polar bear gains the protection of the Endangered Species Act today."

The email I got from We today said 100,000 had signed the petition and they're shooting for a goal of 115,000. That sounds fishy; clearly their initial goal was something big and round, like 200,000 or 500,000.

The Center is much more hyper in its pitch for its own petition:

On Thursday, the federal government will make one of the most important decisions in conservation history.

True enough, thus far.

If it declares the polar bear to be an "endangered" species, the decision will set off an unprecedented worldwide discussion on global warming… and establish legal requirements to do something about it.

They don't say what that "something" is -- basically putting any new project of any kind that has a footprint under the federal microscope.

If the government refuses, desperately needed global action will again be delayed by the Bush administration's stubbornness. Short-term corporate profits will continue to control political agendas and threaten life on Earth. All of life on Earth.

How can Bush delay global action? He only has authority (limited authority) over one small part of the globe. Besides, the ESA doesn't allow economic impacts -- "short-term corporate profits" -- to influence decisions on listings, and the Center knows it, since they raise the argument all the time in their endless river of litigation. But that makes lousy rhetoric.

They go on to state a goal of 60,000 signatures on their petition.

Interestingly, another major environmental litigation mill, the Natural Resources Defense Council, apparently isn't on board with the polar bear since its current list of issues shuns the bear. Why? If the critter's about to go under, the NRDC would definitely be engaged. It litigates regularly on endangered species issues.

Perhaps the NRDC knows what we all know -- that the polar bears are doing just fine, thank you, and this is all a false effort to misuse the Endangered Species Act as an economic jackhammer instead of a law to protect animals.