With all eco-eyes focused on the action (or, more properly, inaction) on a climate bill, other critical components of a clean energy economy can be overlooked. That was the case on Monday as the dominant news story concerned speculation about whether Republican members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works would show up for Tuesday's climate bill markup session (they didn't).

While that tragicomedy played out, a forum at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House went largely unnoticed. The "Clean Energy Economy Forum" was hosted by the Department of the Interior, which manages one-fifth of all land in the nation (and 1.7 billion acres on the outer continental shelf). Given the sheer immensity of these lands, DOI policies play an enormous role in greenhouse-gas emissions and in shaping what our nation's energy future will look like. The forum was only the latest of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's efforts to make DOI policies conform to the realities of climate change and the parallel need to develop renewable sources of energy.

In his second month in office (March), Salazar issued an order making renewable energy development a top DOI priority.

More recently, in mid-September, Salazar signed a secretarial order establishing a framework to coordinate climate change efforts throughout the vast DOI bureaucracy. Policy, data gathering, and public education will all be coordinated by the newly formed Climate Change Response Council.

Moral of the Story

Not to put too fine a point on it, but ... the DOI’s actions are a reminder that the legislative branch is only one of three on our governmental tree. The executive can flex its muscles in other ways if Congress isn’t up to the task. The EPA—another part of the executive branch—has already signaled its willingness to regulate CO2 under provisions of the Clean Air Act. Perhaps EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson will step up to the plate with a regulatory solution to climate change if a legislative one fails.

In the end, we do need a comprehensive climate change bill from Congress. But Republican obstructionism, combined with the Democratic failure to govern as a majority party on the most important issue of the day, may force President Obama to bravely go where no Congress has gone before—or appears to be going anytime soon, for that matter.

That would require bold action, measures carrying significant political risks. But isn’t that the platform on which Obama was elected in the first place?

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In upholding the Bush-era decision on polar bears, is Obama shrewdly pushing a larger climate agenda?iStock PhotoThe Obama administration will uphold a controversial Bush-era decision that limits protection for polar bears under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced today.

Polar bears will continue to be considered a threatened species because their arctic habitat is melting due to climate change. The decision essentially means ESA protections cannot apply to oil exploration and greenhouse gas emissions originating outside of the Arctic-—the main threats to the bears' habitat.

For environmentalists, the decision means another disappointment from Salazar, a Coloradan with a ranching background whose environmental credentials were hotly debated when he was nominated for the post. Salazar upset wildlife defenders in March by upholding another Bush decision to take gray wolves off the endangered list in much of the northern Rocky Mountains and upper Midwest.

"For Salazar to adopt Bush's polar bear extinction plan is confirming the worst fears of his tenure as Secretary of the Interior," Center for Biological Diversity biodiversity program director Noah Greenwald said in an quickly released statement. "Secretary Salazar would apparently prefer to please Sarah Palin than to protect polar bears."

"We're very disappointed that Secretary Salazar decided not to cut through the red tape and restore protections for polar bears immediately," Jamie Rappaport Clark, executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife and a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a release. "The polar bear's Arctic sea ice habitat is melting away, the Arctic seals which polar bears hunt for food are becoming increasingly scarce, and the cause is clearly global warming. In spite of this, Secretary Salazar is leaving in place a rule that says activities that cause global warming and therefore harm polar bears will never be considered violations of the Endangered Species Act under any circumstances. That made no sense under the Bush administration and it certainly makes no sense for the Obama administration."

In his announcement, Salazar said polar bears would continue to receive federal protection under the ESA and the Marine Mammal Protection Act; the department's main point is that the ESA isn't the right way to address climate change.

"We must do all we can to help the polar bear recover, recognizing that the greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change," Salazar said. "However, the Endangered Species Act is not the proper mechanism for controlling our nation's carbon emissions.  Instead, we need a comprehensive energy and climate strategy that curbs climate change and its impacts -– including the loss of sea ice. Both President Obama and I are committed to achieving that goal."

That spin was echoed by Sen. Mark Begich, Alaska's newly elected Democrat. "I commend Secretary Salazar for protecting the polar bear while also recognizing it is not appropriate to use a federal law like the ESA to try to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. I support Secretary Salazar's belief that we need a comprehensive energy and climate strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but the ESA should not be used as a back-door regulatory tool to achieve this goal," he said in a statement.

The Obama administration had until tomorrow to overturn the Bush rule, known formally as a 4(d) exemption. Today's news could be read as further proof the president prefers to tackle climate change through a comprehensive plan -- with approval from Congress -- rather than through a series of regulatory maneuvers.

Don't expect the polar bear story to end here: Defenders of Wildlife, which has sued in the past to force bear protections, said today it "will be forced to continue its litigation challenging the rule."

It's been an eventful few weeks in wildlife protection. Last Tuesday Obama overturned another crucial Bush ESA rule, restoring the ability of government biologists to weigh in on how federal actions would impact plants and animals. On Monday the gray wolf delisting took effect, handing the animals over to state management, which includes hunting plans, in Montana and Idaho.

And on Wednesday the Fish and Wildlife Service said it would review the threat climate change poses to the American pika, a small Western mammal that thrives only in a narrow altitude range. The pika could be the first animal in the lower 48 states to animal to join the endangered species list primarily because of climate change; FWS will submit its findings by next February.

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Related Story: The Wolf and the Polar Bear (May 1, 2009)

Read more reactions from lawmakers and interest groups >>>

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Additional reactions:

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of Senate Environment Committee: "I disagree with the Department of Interior's decision to limit the tools we have available under the Endangered Species Act to save the polar bear from extinction. Monitoring the situation will not tell us more than we know now - that the polar bear is threatened and we need to act."

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), noted climate denier and ranking Republican on Senate Environment Committee: "I applaud the Secretary of Interior for making the right call and applying a common-sense approach to the Endangered Species Act. Secretary Salazar is absolutely correct: 'The Endangered Species Act is not the proper mechanism for controlling our nation’s carbon emissions.' The same is also true of the Clean Air Act or any other federal law."

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R): "We all want to preserve and protect the polar bear using the best possible tools, but there is absolutely no need to change the 4(d) rule to accomplish this purpose. I want to thank Secretary Salazar for his careful review of the science and the administrative record that led to this decision."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska): "I'm pleased that the department has chosen to retain the existing polar bear listing rule, which provides rational measures for the protection of polar bears within their natural range. ... I appreciate the Obama administration's position that the ESA should not be used to address global climate change, but I remain concerned about the ability of this rule to be misused through third-party lawsuits to block important projects anywhere in the country."

Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska): "This reaches far beyond the scope of protecting polar bears. It was a political ploy influenced by the extreme environmentalists to hurt our economy, and put Americans out of jobs. Want to add more livestock to your herd? You can’t, unless you run it past Fish and Wildlife first. Want to build a school or church thousands of miles away from the nearest polar bear? Make sure you add the Department of Interior to the list of government officials you need to check with. What happened to our civil liberties? Revoking the rule would have set a dangerous precedent; it would impede our economy and hurt Americans. I commend the Secretary for maintaining the 4(d) special rule for polar bears. This is a victory for Alaska as we move toward securing our energy future."

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), ranking Republican on House Natural Resources Committee: "On the same day the Administration announced the highest unemployment rate since 1983, I applaud Secretary Salazar for making a common sense decision that will ensure more jobs are not lost due to excessive regulations of greenhouse gases by the government. This decision will help protect crucial projects needed to stimulate our economy from becoming the target of frivolous lawsuits by environmental groups designed to stop economic development in our country. We all want to preserve and protect the polar bear, and I am pleased the Administration has recognized that we can do that without shutting down the economies of cities and states that are thousands of miles away from the Arctic."

Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope: "If polar bears are going to survive global warming, they will need far greater protections than what the law currently offers. The Bush administration enacted this special rule in an effort to delay action in the face of overwhelming evidence that global warming poses a very real and immediate threat to polar bears. It's unfortunate that this rule is still lingering as a reminder of the Bush administration's denial of science and failure to act."

David Dickson, director of the Alaska Wilderness League's Western Arctic and Oceans Program: "We're extremely displeased in Secretary Salazar's decision to keep the previous administration's polar bear policy in place. We think the title of his press release -- 'Salazar Retains Conservation Rule for Polar Bears' -- is a little bit ironic. That rule basically keeps in place protection of the polar bear under the Marine Mammal Protection Act instead of the Endangered Species Act, which the polar bear should fall under. We are hopeful that with this administration we can work with the secretary and Department of Interior to develop a rational and sound policy for the conservation of the arctic, and thus the polar bear. The polar bear is an iconic species of a habitat that is critically threatened.

Melanie Duchin, Greenpeace's global warming campaigner in Alaska: "Secretary Salazar's failure to rescind this regulation only serves to cement the Bush administration's legacy of ignoring global warming science, thus putting the polar bear at further risk of extinction. Regrettably, it seems to reflect an emerging willingness by the Obama administration to ignore clear scientific imperatives on global warming in the face of industry pressure."

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Wolf-people, give a howl for your lupine brethren, who lose federal protection under the Endangered Species Act in much of the northern Rocky Mountains and upper Midwest today.

The Obama administration, in one of its least popular moves with environmentalists, upheld a Bush era decision that gray wolves have returned from the brink of extinction and no longer require federal protection. That decision took effect today, opening the gate for hunting in Idaho and Montana, which share a population of some 1,300 wolves.

Wildlife groups have filed notice that they will sue to overturn the decision, saying state management plans don’t provide enough protection for the species that was listed as endangered in 1974.

Last Friday I proposed that "Save the wolves" campaigns typify a strain of old-school environmentalism that is being swallowed by the much broader movement against climate change. The poster-species for the new environmentalism, the polar bear, faces its own day of reckoning this week:

Greenwire has a piece on the behind-the-scenes tussle over the polar bear decision; look for more on Grist on this later in the week.

Oh, and it's also a big week for a little mountainous mammal, the American Pika, whose high-elevation habitat faces climate disruption. KQED's Climate Watch reports on the pika's prospects for protection, which ride on decisions from the courts and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

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Next week brings two milestones in wildlife protection that serve as a lesson in contrasts -- examples of what the environmental movement has been and what it's becoming.

On Monday, gray wolves in Montana, Idaho, and parts of other northern states leave the endangered species list, designated as an officially "recovered" species. Once driven nearly to extinction, the wolves will fall under the watch of state management -- which includes hunting -- following the Obama Interior Department's decision in March to sign off on a delisting process put in motion on George W. Bush's watch.

Later in the week, the legal status of polar bears will become clearer when the Obama administration must decide whether to overturn a last-minute Bush move that denied the arctic mammals key protections under the Endangered Species Act. Acknowledging that the polar bear is threatened by a melting habitat, Bush officials still ruled that endangered species protections cannot apply to causes originating outside of their habitat (in other words, the greenhouse gas emissions heating up the polar regions). Obama has until May 9 to overturn the decision; otherwise, it stands.

Two different species located in very different places -- what's the connection?

The wolf story is a chapter in the environmental movement's decades-long efforts to protect specific species and eco-systems -- a campaign descended directly from "save the whales" and "stop the logging." Protecting the polar bear, however, is all about confronting the existential threat of global warming.

Wolf, meet bear. When it comes to saving the planet, you're just a sideshow.

Gray wolves are a classic "old environmentalism" problem. Humans threatened the species in a very localized way: they shot too many wolves and settled in their habitat. Local ecosystems were disrupted, and when the federal government introduced a Rocky Mountain recovery plan in 1995, it tried to balance the interests of local parties, such as cattle and sheep farmers. Environmentalists fought for stronger protections through their long-preferred method -- lawsuits. This continues: a coalition led by Earthjustice will sue to overturn the wolf decision in June, once a 60-days-notice requirement has been met.

For years the Bush administration sought to remove wolves from the endangered species list, and wolf advocates twice blocked the move in court. When Interior Secretary Ken Salazar upheld the Bush policy in March (it had been put on hold by the new administration), it was like, well, upholding a Bush environmental policy -- exactly the opposite of what many in the environmental community expected.

In public and private statements, Interior officials have framed wolves' resurgence as a success story -- what the Endangered Species Act intended. They cite the wolf population across the Northern Rockies -- about 1,600, including about 100 breeding pairs -- and evidence that wolf packs in three distinct areas (Yellowstone ecosystem, central Idaho, and northwest Montana) have enough contact to interbreed and ensure genetic diversity.

"The population has really come back from the brink," said Seth Willey, a Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) regional recovery coordinator in Denver. "There's been scientific consensus on this for a long time."

The delisting hinges on management plans submitted by the states. Montana's and Idaho's plans were approved, though the department rejected Wyoming's trigger-happy plan [PDF] as inadequate, so wolves will remain federally protected in that state.

Wildlife groups find the Montana and Idaho plans nearly as troubling; Idaho, in particular, would allow hunters to reduce the current population to 104 animals, down from a current count of 778. Idaho Gov. Butch Otter (R) famously said he would be first line for a wolf hunting license.

"We've made all this progress," said Noah Greenwald, a conservation biologist at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Instead of continuing with that and ensuring the wolves recover to a larger area of their historic range, we're going to shut the door and allow them, particularly Idaho, to reduce their population to the point where it's questionable they're going to be viable."

Suzanne Stone, an Idaho field conservationist for Defenders of Wildlife, a leading wolf advocacy group, questioned whether the Rocky Mountain populations are sufficiently connected, as FWS claims. She said federal recovery goals are based on an outdated 1987 plan [PDF].

"Since that time, wildlife scientists have repeatedly warned that the original wolf recovery goals were set too low and in order to reach a recovered metapopulation, the northern Rockies wolf population needs to be much larger than a few hundred wolves," she wrote in an email. "... Genetic scientists have also confirmed that when our regional wolf population reached 450 wolves region wide (the current requirement for delisting), the wolf population was still disconnected and not functioning as a metapopulation by providing genetic connectivity between all three subpopulations."

The Interior Department maintains its plans are based on the best available science. The government's recovery findings were detailed in the Federal Register [PDF] on April 2, written largely by wolf recovery architect Ed Bangs. Further, said spokesperson Hugh Vickery, the Endangered Species Act compels a species to be delisted when it has recovered, meaning Salazar's decisions was less a judgment call than a requirement.

"How the decision is made is clearly spelled out in the law," Vickery said. "If the best available science says to do it, we have to do it."

The department's handling of the announcement didn't win it any friends. Wildlife groups that had worked on the issue for years resented being caught off guard by the announcement.

"It's too soon to pass judgment on how [Salazar] will ultimately do as secretary, but certainly it was a warning flag that more needs to be done to arrive at these decisions carefully, that more communication needs to occur," said Bob Irvin, the senior vice president for wildlife at Defenders.

Congressional supporters of continued protections also felt left in the dark on announcement. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) wrote to Salazar asking him to delay the effective date (he did not). She also questioned whether the Endangered Species Act allows the department to single out a particular area -- Wyoming -- for continued protection, a point Defenders of Wildlife also raises.

A staff member for Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), another longtime wolf advocate, said simply that Dicks found the announcement unexpected, disagreed with it, and had spoken to Salazar about it.

Defenders of Wildlife filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents showing whether Salazar looked at any new research before making the "scientifically flawed" decision. It's awaiting a response, Irvin said.

"We're very disappointed in the [wolf] decision, but it's way too early to draw any lines between it and future administration actions," said Andrew Wetzler, endangered species project director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "This is a bad decision among a number of good decisions."

Unlike gray wolves, the threat to polar bears' habitat isn't local. It won't be fixed with a regional management plan, which can't address greenhouse gases from tailpipe emissions in Los Angeles or coal plants in India. It won't be fixed with a typical lawsuit -- wildlife advocates can't litigate a national (or global) climate change plan into existence.

True, polar bears are furry and loveable (from a distance!), and much like wolves inspire awe at nature's untamed predators. Like wolves, they require protection from local habitat destruction. But polar bears have become the poster-species for the issue that defines the new environmental movement -- one that concerns itself less with charismatic species than with the tremendous disruption to human life that climate change will bring.

On its surface, the wolf delisting puts President Obama in an awkward spot -- upsetting a key plank in the Democratic platform -- environmental voters -- and complicating the clean break he's tried to make from Bush's environmental policies. The political sensitivity of the decision was made clear by the fact that Salazar's announcement back in March came on a Friday afternoon, the classic time for downplaying unpopular news, and was issued with no comment from the White House.

But if the White House upholds the Bush decisions on wolves, it may show that Obama is making a political calculation. The president's selection of Salazar, a Colorado senator with a fairly strong environmental record and deep family ties to ranching, can be seen as a signal of the president's belief that it's more important to mediate culturally charged western states issues like wolves and save political ammunition for the bigger challenge -- enacting a comprehensive strategy for combating climate change.

"The science makes it so clear that the polar bear is threatened by greenhouse gas emissions, and it's such a well-known species, that they should be considering rescinding [the Bush-era rule]. I think it's still possible they will," said Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Overturning the Bush exception, Greenwald said, could lend additional weight to efforts to strengthen auto-efficiency standards and block offshore drilling and oil shale development.

Interior Department Press Secretary Kendra Barkoff said the department had not yet decided on the polar bear rule. A decision must come by next Saturday.

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