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In the last few years, the American public has come to recognize that global warming is a very serious problem, and that human disregard for the environment, through actions like cutting down forests and burning fossil fuels, is responsible for the growing climate crisis. Even most Republicans have given up their denial and now admit that we have to make serious changes to our environment and energy policy to reduce the impact of the effects of global warming that are now upon us.

Not Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin wants to drag the Republican Party back into the past, and she wants to keep America running on the same old dirty fossil fuel economy that was developed back in the last century.

Sarah Palin still doesn’t admit that human beings are responsible in any way for global warming. She thinks that burning fossil fuels is just fine for the climate.

What’s more, Sarah Palin doesn’t even admit what’s happening in her own back yard, in Alaska. For the second year in a row, ice in the Arctic Ocean is reaching record low levels - a melt off of tremendous proportions that even global warming experts didn’t think would occur until the end of this century. Glaciers are disintegrating, and ice floes are disappearing at an historically unprecedented rate, causing sea levels to rise, and threatening human coastal communities…

…and polar bears. Polar bears hunt on the ice, and if they don’t have ice to hunt on, they don’t get enough to eat. Their hunger makes it more difficult for them to breed, and for adults to survive. Loss of weight among polar bears has been documented, and other arctic marine mammals, such as walrus and ringed seals are in serious trouble as well.

That’s why, after years of illegal delay, the Bush Administration was finally forced to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act earlier this year. However, as Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin has filed suit in order to force the polar bear back off the list of threatened animals protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Sarah Palin insists that there isn’t any problem. Science contradicts Palin, but she doesn’t seem interested in what scientific experts have to say on the matter. Sarah Palin thinks that she knows better. That’s the same arrogant attitude of George W. Bush that has led America into disaster.

Sarah Palin denies the climate crisis affecting polar bears for the same reason George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have: Sarah Palin is in the pocket of Big Oil.

Big oil companies want to go drilling for oil in polar bear habitat. That offshore oil drilling would not bring us any gasoline for years, and would only save Americans a few pennies at the pump, but the oil corporations would make huge profits from the additional drilling.

Sarah Palin thinks that what’s good for big oil is good for America. We have seen under George W. Bush that Palin’s idea of what’s good for America is just plain wrong.

The problems that are placing polar bears in danger are the same problems that place Americans, and people around the world in danger. Already, there are wars being fought, such as the conflict in Darfur, because of climate change. Already the American Southwest is dealing with droughts, the American West is facing wildfires on a scale that has never been seen before. Our fisheries are dwindling, our natural resources are endangered.

The climate crisis has begun, and Sarah Palin is not qualified to deal with it. Yet, as a Vice President under the most elderly President in American history, the chances are very good that Sarah Palin would become President herself.

She just isn’t up to the job. The problem with Palin isn’t just inexperience. Sarah Palin also has demonstrated that she is willing to put oil company profits above the good of the American people. Our nation has suffered eight years under that style of failed leadership. We cannot repeat that mistake. Sarah Palin must not become Vice President.

We’re in the same boat with the polar bears. We will suffer the same neglect under Sarah Palin that the polar bears will suffer. As animals, polar bears don’t have a political voice. So, it’s up to us for to speak for the polar bears. That’s why we’re created this t-shirt for the 2008 election: Polar bears against Palin. (Made in the USA, no sweatshop labor involved)

Our Green Man pointed out something yesterday that you won’t find written about in many other articles on the subject: When Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced that he had been finally forced to give protection to polar bears under the Endangered Species Act (because polar bears are actually, you know, endangered), that didn’t mean that polar bears would actually be receiving any protection. Kempthorne announced:

“While the legal standards under the ESA compel me to list the polar bear as threatened, I want to make clear that this listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting. Any real solution requires action by all major economies for it to be effective. That is why I am taking administrative and regulatory action to make certain the ESA isn’t abused to make global warming policies.”

Polar bears are threatened by global warming, you see, and the Endangered Species Act requires the government to remove threats to endangered species whenever possible. Yet, Secretary Kempthorne says that nothing will be done about global warming, even though the Bush Administration has now grudgingly acknowledged that global warming exists, and admits with this listing that global warming is severe enough that it is likely to cause polar bears to go extinct in the wild if there is no intervention.

All that was noted by the Green Man. What I want to point out this morning is something in the tone of Dirk Kempthorne’s remarks. It’s his use of the word abuse.

“I am taking administrative and regulatory action to make certain the ESA isn’t abused to make global warming policies,” said Kempthorne. There are two meanings of the word abuse that Dirk Kempthorne might have intended with that statement:

1. That creating global warming policy under the authority of the Endangered Species Act might actually injure someone
2. That the act of creating global warming policy under the authority of the Endangered Species Act is a misuse of the Endangered Species Act that is contrary to the intended function of the Endangered Species Act

The first possibility is absurd. When a human-produced disaster is of such proportions that even powerful animals in areas far from human habitation could be wiped out by it, a policy to bring the disaster under control is not abusive. The policies that created the disaster are the abuse. Given that human habitat is as much under threat as polar bear habitat, it’s mind-boggling to consider that Republicans in the Bush Administration still consider taking action to deal with global warming would be abusive against human beings. Republicans have been saying that for over 20 years now. Do they still believe that they were right to fail to act in time to avert the tragic effects we are now suffering?

The second possibility is equally absurd. It is the intended purpose of the Endangered Species Act to trigger the creation of government policies that remove environmental threats that contribute to species extinction. Given that it’s global warming that threatens the extinction of polar bears, the creation of global warming policy is exactly what the listing of polar bears under the Endangered Species Act ought to result in.

That’s not abuse. It’s the law, and it’s in the interest of everyone involved - except for, perhaps, big oil and gas corporations. Under the Endangered Species Act, those corporate interests must give way to the interests of the actual human beings, and the animals, involved.