Climate change is not just about polar bears

The adoption of the polar bears into the ESA has put a “charismatic face” on the campaign for climate change – polar bears, said Jonathan Adler, law professor at Case Western Reserve University. Adler and others spoke of the negative and positive effects of listing polar bears as a threatened species due to climate change and the shrinking of the sea ice.

Adler said that the main purpose of listing polar bears as threatened animals is merely for informational purposes, so people are aware of what is going on. From a legal standpoint the consequences of this action is that the legislation is not discretionary and that citizens will have the ability to create change through litigation. In the end, the threatened animal listing probably won’t help polar bears, Adler said, but it may work to change the ESA through legal action.

On May 14, 2008, Dirk Kempthorne, interior secretary announced that the Department of the Interior classified polar bears as a threatened species, giving them protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This was the first listing of a species under the ESA where a threat was identified as anthropogenic climate change. In the discussion today, experts discussed the ramifications of this new classification of polar bears.

Bryan Arroyo, assistant director for the Endangered Species program at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said that people can no longer dispute the validity of climate change. It has been proven with the best of our scientific abilities, with a 90 percent probability, that climate change is influenced by the human release of green house gases. While the science is not final or perfect, it is the best that is available right now and must be acted upon, Arroyo said.

Arroyo said that climate change is not an issue for the United States, but a global challenge that needed to be dealt with. He said that climate change is “not just about polar bears” but that it affects every aspect of human life. There is a documented lessening of sea ice, a 39 percent reduction from 1999-2000 and the prediction is that ice will recede further. Arroyo called for a comprehensive review of the ESA, which hasn’t been reviewed in 16 years.