Oil hunters can annoy polar bears, agency says
In May, 2008 the US Government listed the polar bear as “Threatened”, and declared that it required protection due to loss of Arctic sea ice as a result of global warming. Now in June, 2008 the US Fish & Wildlife Service has given legal protection to oil companies if small numbers of polar bears (and Pacific walruses) are harmed unintentionally due to their activities over the next 5 years. The oil companies want to search for oil in the Chukchi Sea off the Northwest coast of Alaska. About 2000 of the world’s polar bear population (8%) lives in or around the Chukchi Sea and environmentalists argue that this announcement means that oil companies have a “blank cheque” to harass these bears. The companies will have to construct hundreds of miles of ice roads and paths along the shoreline along with peripheral human activities that will disturb the polar bear populations. Environmentalists claim that this activity will interfere with the bears’ hunting for prey and raising of young in snow dens. Representatives for the US Fish and Wildlife Service say that the oil companies will be operating under the same rules that they’ve used in other areas and that the threat to the bears is due to the loss of sea ice and not the activities of the oil companies.
To drill or not to drill. On the one hand we live in a society where our economy is based on oil and the products of the petroleum industry. Gasoline are soaring (around $1.30/L in Canada and $4.00/Gal in the US). Food prices are rising also, in part due to the high price of fuel for transportation and agriculture. There’s increasing global demand for oil that’s going to get much worse in the years ahead (think of all those up-coming Indian and Chinese car-buyers!). The US has just fought a war in Iraq that was in part, at least, to guarantee their supply of oil for the near future. With all these pressures, how can one argue that we should NOT be searching for new oil deposits in the Arctic (and off the coast of California and in the Gulf of Mexico …)?? Do the needs of 2000 polar bears outweigh our needs??
The problem is that the science points to burning of fossil fuels as the main reason for the global warming that we’re facing. It’s our reliance on oil that has likely been the cause of the loss of Arctic sea ice. Scientists tell us that the Arctic is experience the effects of global warming on a much greater scale than we are at the moment. Is it rational to ignore this and continue to drill for more oil in the very place that’s suffering the greatest from global warming? Is it rational to ignore the warning signs that these threatened bears are providing to us?? While high gas and food prices are a problem we NEED to address, will they drive us to CHANGE our behaviour and get us to wake up to the reality of global warming?
Philosophically and ethically, I think I agree with those who would say that we have no right to drive species after species to extinction and that we should do everything we can to save these bears. But putting that aside, it may seem easy to weigh the real hurt and suffering of people caused by present-day high gas and food prices against the hurt and suffering of a few bears … but will we one day look back at the loss of these poor bears and shake our heads at our lack of foresight when people the world over are suffering and dying due to the very real effects of global warming that we once had a chance to mitigate or prevent?
Mr. Patenaude