The Polar Excise

U.S. Interior edited document relating climate change to polar-bear fate

Remember when U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced that the agency would propose listing polar bears under the Endangered Species Act? And he said that, while the bears' home was indeed melting, "that whole aspect of climate change is beyond the scope of the [ESA]"? Funny story. Turns out Interior did study Arctic warming and efforts to reverse the trend. Even churned out a review of climate-change literature. And then those details got edited out of the final proposal; a chapter called "Mechanisms to Regulate Climate Change," for example, was changed to "Mechanisms to Regulate Sea Ice Recession." In other polar-bear news, Russia might sanction a hunt that will, it hopes, discourage poaching. Banned for the last 50 years, a legal hunt could help keep the peace between humans in Arctic villages and bears wandering in from Meltyland. "It is like the Russian saying" about win-win solutions, said one hunter. "The wolves would not be hungry, and the sheep would remain intact."