Often, we’re tempted to think of politics in merely human terms, but the impact of misguided political ideologies goes far beyond our own dwellings, to even the most remote places on Earth. Just one example of the connection of human politics to the health of non-human life is the grey whale.

Miles out into the Pacific Ocean, starving grey whales have been taken to the brink by the right wing obsession with oil. That same obsession with oil may also finally push them into extinction.

Imagine whales so thin that you can see their ribs. That’s what scientists have been seeing in Pacific waters, identifying grey whales migrating between the Arctic and the Gulf of Mexico. The prevailing theory is that the whales are having trouble finding enough to eat, due to a combination of overfishing and climate change.

Climate change is being brought about by the burning of fossil fuels like petroleum. It’s ironic, then, that the quest for even more petroleum threatens the Arctic sanctuary key to the survival of the Pacific grey whale.

The starving whales must make their way up to the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea, to the north of Alaska. Once there, they depend upon what have historically been rich supplies of food, enabled by a combination of cold, clean, peaceful waters and strong upwelling currents.

That food supply, already compromised by climate change, may soon be reduced even further by a plan hatched by the Bush White House to lease out large areas of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas to companies seeking to drill for petroleum and natural gas. That activity, even if major oil spills are avoided, will disturb what ecological integrity remains, leaving even less for the starving grey whales to eat.

William Megill, who studies the grey whales, reminds us that the problems affecting the Pacific grey whales extend far beyond the grey whales themselves. “I hesitate to get too alarmist,” he says, “but this summer will tell a lot about the future of our planet.”

(Sources: Alaska Wilderness League, The Independent, July 10, 2007)