Obama faces tricky decision on polar bear, climate change

A U.S. judge on Thursday asked the Obama administration to clarify whether polar bears are endangered, a listing that ultimately could be used to force polluters to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan asked the Interior Department for more information on whether the bears, which are losing Arctic sea ice habitat due to global warming, could be considered endangered instead of merely threatened.

The move came after environmental groups challenged a 2008 decision by the administration of President George W. Bush to list the bears as threatened, a ruling the Obama administration upheld last year.

If Interior eventually decided to list them as endangered, the bears would get full protection under federal law.

The bear was the first species to be listed as threatened due to climate change, setting off a furor among the Alaska delegation. Senator Lisa Murkowski (left), Alaska's senior senator, has tried to undermine the endangered-species finding.

The protection, granted in 2008 after much delay by the Bush administration, was not the most stringent under the Endangered Species Act. The bear is "threatened," not "endangered," which can make a big difference in regulation that follows listing under the act.

An "endangered" designation, for instance, would have made it impossible for then-Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne (right) to have passed a special rule that limited the scope of the listing, saying it could not be used to limit greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to global warming and melting ice in the Arctic Ocean.

Environmentalists sued almost immediately to boost the bear into the "endangered" camp, and a federal judge agreed Wednesday that the Department of Interior should review the bear's protected status, which will remain the same in the meantime.

That review could put Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar (left) -- a bete noir to conservatives after his ban on deep-water drilling following the BP spill -- back into the hot seat.

If the Obama administration puts the bear into the endangered category, it potentially opens the door to litigation against new power plants and other industrial facilities that belch greenhouse gases far away from the bear's territory -- an untested interpretation of the Endangered Species Act. U.S. oil refiners, coal-burning power plants and other polluters of greenhouse gases far away from Alaska could get sued for contributing to global warming and be forced to cut emissions to protect the bears.

The Obama administration last month proposed a vast area as "critical habitat" for the polar bear: more than 200,000 square miles on the Alaska coast. That sparked immediate criticism from Alaska's Department of Fish and Game.

The new Congress, including presumptive House Speaker John Boehner, is decidedly less friendly to climate-change regulation. Republicans in the House of Representatives and elsewhere have made it clear they will examine the Environmental Protection Agency's climate-related activities, which include its "endangerment" ruling that found carbon dioxide emissions threatened human health by contributing to climate change.

The agency, however, is under order from a federal court to begin regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. But environmentalists note that it will be worth watching how EPA acts in the coming months, with a more hostile Congress looking over its shoulder.

Kassie Siegel, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, which challenged the listing with other groups, said Sullivan's move might lead to an endangered listing.

"It opens the door for the Obama administration to break with the flawed decision and policies of the Bush administration," she said.

Opponents of full protection for the bears have said that projections about the threat to the species have not been based on current population levels, but on expectations of melting sea ice.

The administration was notably quiet about the decision Wednesday. The Interior Department would not comment on the case either as it is still in litigation. The Interior Department has until December 23 to reply to the judge.

Source:
Los Angeles Times, "Obama faces tricky decision on polar bear, climate change", by Geoff Mohan, accessed November 5, 2010
Reuters, "Judge asks U.S. to review polar bear listing", accessed November 5, 2010