Polar Bears Threatening to Deliver Us $200 Oil

[audtatious]

Commentary by Kevin Hassett

May 12 (Bloomberg) -- Protecting the environment is a noble cause, although the consequences can be costly.

Back in August 1973, a biologist found a humble fish called the snail darter in the Little Tennessee River. At the time, it was believed that this species would be pushed to extinction if the Tennessee Valley Authority finished its Tellico Dam.

The snail darter became a celebrity, as environmentalists used the Endangered Species Act to halt the project. It took six years and an act of Congress to complete the dam.

Since then, the snail darter has been the poster child of endangered species litigation. The fish, which subsequently was found in other Tennessee waters, established the conventional wisdom about the interaction between endangered species and development. The pattern is familiar. Someone discovers a rare species in a local area. It is declared endangered, and then local projects are blocked.

If things go the right way this week, the local nature of this issue might change. An endangered species could have an effect on economic activity everywhere in the U.S., not just in a single locale. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken recently ordered the Interior Department to decide by May 15 whether polar bears should be listed under provisions of the act. There is a strong chance that the polar bear will be declared ``threatened.'' If so, then everything about the economics of endangered species will be turned on its head.

Why is the polar bear in trouble? The main risk is that global warming will melt ice in the Arctic. Polar bears, biologists believe, need ice to live. Take away the ice, and no more polar bears.

Arctic Predator

The dependence on ice results from the bear's evolution as a predator. They mostly eat seals, and capture them by lurking around on the ice. They can't outswim a seal, but they can pounce on one when the seal slides into its den on an ice floe.

They are so good at hunting on the ice, and so bad at surviving without it, that bears that live in areas that have significant summer ice melts tend to go without food during the iceless times. So it is reasonable to believe that global warming would, if it melted the ice caps, be a serious threat to polar bears.

This week's probable decision is debatable, to say the least. One problem is that the beast, which is notoriously hard to count, exists in vast numbers throughout the Arctic. Opinions even differ as to whether its population is increasing or decreasing.

Population Dispute

For example, professor J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania recently told Science Daily that ``the polar bear populations have been increasing rapidly in recent decades due to hunting restrictions.''

Others, such as biologists Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher, see troubling signs of decline in specific subpopulations that live in regions more affected by ice melts.

The truth is, as noted by my American Enterprise Institute colleague Kenneth Green in a recent article, ``Is the Polar Bear Endangered, or Just Conveniently Charismatic?'' we just don't have the data to assess what is happening to polar bear populations.

``Polar bear populations are difficult to measure, in part because they travel so much, are sparsely populated, and live far from people,'' he writes. Even aerial surveys and mark-and- recapture studies, which are the best tools to estimate changes in polar bear populations, offer ambiguous results.

If the polar bear is to be declared threatened it must be because the Interior Department accepts the forecasts of continued global warming, and a significant reduction in Arctic ice.

There are two reasons why that decision, if it is made, will be momentous.

Geographic Reach

The first is the possible wide geographic reach of the global warming argument. The snail darter almost killed a single dam. The polar bear could, in theory at least, stop everything.

Suppose someone wants to build a coal-burning power plant in Florida. Environmentalists might challenge the construction on the grounds that the plant will emit greenhouse gases leading to global warming and an increased threat to polar bears.

It is hard to say how such challenges would play out. My guess is that it would heighten the pressure on the U.S. to adopt a cap-and-trade emissions program or a carbon tax.

The second impact of this ruling is that it will likely end all Arctic exploration for oil and gas, at least in the U.S. Given surging world demand for oil, increased supply is the only thing standing between us and $200-a-barrel oil.

Costly Restrictions

These restrictions will have a large cost. ``The U.S. Geological Survey and the Norwegian company StatoilHydro estimate that the Arctic holds as much as one-quarter of the world's remaining undiscovered oil and gas deposits,'' Scott Borgerson, an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs. ``Some Arctic wildcatters believe this estimate could increase substantially as more is learned about the region's geology.''

Many biologists believe that global warming is a serious threat to the polar bear. If that leads to the polar bear being listed as threatened this week, then the world you live in will have fundamentally changed.

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He is an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in his bid for the 2008 presidential nomination. The opinions expressed are his own.)

[rn79870]

I'm a little confused. The ice is melting due to global warming, which is caused by searching for oil in the great artic reserves?

Wait, didn't the latest report show that there was something like 700,000 sq km more ice this year than last?

Tree huggers...

[audtatious]

Here's another enviro-news story...------------------------------------------------

Stand By For Higher Food Prices, Courtesy of California’s Environmental Crazies

In an article appearing in the Los Angeles Times, actor Martin Sheen was quoted in a letter he wrote to the Malibu Times about the use of fluoride by the Metropolitan Water District. "We are not lab rats and reject any attempt to be treated as such," he penned.

Huh?

Where do these people come from? Isn’t the prevention of tooth decay high on the to-do list of environmental worshipers? At what point will these people just leave the rest of us alone? In the interest of full disclosure, I twice briefly met Mr. Sheen years ago and found him to be a real gentleman, but he seems to frequently go off the deep end, as do many of his like-minded Hollywierd friends.

Living on the Monterey Peninsula of California’s beautiful central coast, the area attracts the overflow of nuts from the San Francisco Bay area.

The Monterey Bay area is faced with an infestation of the Australian light brown apple moth that could jeopardize the area’s massive agribusiness. If you eat salads, the lettuce probably came from the fertile Salinas Valley. The cost to eradicate the pest was estimated to be $1 million. But the environmentally sensitive, question-authority crowd obtained a court order to temporarily stop the spraying. They claim there is not enough known about the safety of the chemical being sprayed. This caused the state to waste valuable time going to court litigating the safety of “Checkmate,” the name of the pheromone (not pesticide) being used to stop the destructive moth.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) projected that costs would rise tenfold to $10 million if they did not resume spraying soon. According to the CDFA, if left unchecked (no pun intended), the monetary loss to the agriculture industry in Monterey County could reach $650 million. Since then, Mexico and Canada announced they will not accept strawberries grown in the infested areas. For $10 million, the CDFA could transport every paranoid hypochondriac living within the spraying area in limousines to bed and breakfast places in Malibu. Maybe they’d even run into Martin Sheen.

The never heard of, self-proclaimed environmental group, Helping Our Peninsula’s Environment (HOPE), suddenly materialized and filed a court motion to require the manufacturer of Checkmate reveal its industrial trade secret ingredients. This is despite the EPA’s assurance that the substance is safe. That’s like suing the Coca-Cola Company for its famous syrup formula because drinking it too fast may bring on a burp.

HOPE’s attorney actually requested the court extend the temporary restraining order prohibiting spraying until the CDFA “prove(s) to a very apprehensive citizenry that the government is not poisoning them.” Poisoning citizens? He’s asking the CDFA to prove a negative. That’s like asking a husband if he has stopped beating his wife. Hey, CDFA, have you stopped poisoning citizens yet?

I was going to hire a crop duster to spray Pellegrino over the moth infested area. Then I’d issue a phony news release saying that the CDFA had conducted an unannounced, emergency spraying the night before, just to see the reaction from the local environmentalists. But before I could put my plan into action, weather conditions forced the CDFA to abruptly cancel a scheduled spraying of adjacent Santa Cruz County. Faster than a Katrina “victim” could file a fraudulent FEMA claim, a score of people reported they had respiratory problems, skin and eye irritation and that the paint was peeling off their Priuses. Most of the complainers refused to give their names to the officials manning the CDFA hotline that was established to receive such complaints.

If there was one scintilla of evidence that the first round of spraying had caused any harm to anybody – especially animals – Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Charles Gibson would be doing their nightly network newscasts from Monterey’s fisherman’s wharf interviewing the victims of the evil CDFA who ignored citizen pleas not to poison them in favor of big agribusiness.

It would be refreshing to just once hear someone say they appreciated the job the CDFA was doing to eliminate a potential economic disaster. These hard-working, unappreciated civil servants have enough on their plate without having to fend off baseless lawsuits that jeopardize not only the Monterey County economy, but lower food prices for the entire country.

Gregory D. Lee writes for the North Star Writers Group. He can be reached through his website: http://www.gregorydlee.com.