Administration Warns Scientists on Mentioning Polar Bears

For a giant carnivore, polar bears are awfully cute—cute enough to help sell Coke as a secular second banana to Santa. They're also cute enough to provide one of the most heartbreaking icons of the devastation of global warming—swimming to exhaustion and death as the distances between safe, solid patches of arctic ice continue to grow.

The plight of the exhausted polar bear swimming to death packs an emotional wallop that, weirdly, hits folks harder than the disruptions to the economic and cultural life of humans, or the starving of reindeer. There's a thesis in there -- or a fine column by a writer with more time and talent than I can bring to the issue.

Oh yes, and the plight of the polar bear is also the subject of a suit by environmental groups seeking to have it listed as an endangered species.

So, naturally, the Bush administration is finally doing something about global warming: The Fish and Wildlife Service is telling scientists not to mention the polar bears. According to Andrew C. Revkin in NYT, if the polar bears are officially listed as endangered it might force action on restricting greenhouse gases.

Americablog has the memo.

“Please be advised that all foreign travel requests (SF 1175 requests) and any future travel requests involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice and/or polar bears will also require a memorandum from the regional director to the director indicating who’ll be the official spokesman on the trip and the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears.”

More on memeorandum.com

Mickeleh's Take: It serves those ungodly polar bears right for letting Coke recruit them into the secular war on Christmas.

(Tags: climate change, polar bears, propaganda, War on Christmas)