The Salt Lake City Tribune urges the listing, and knows the consequences:
[R]ecognizing that the bears are endangered due to global warming would be an admission by the Bush administration that warming is real and that it already is having dire consequences. An endangered designation would also require federal agencies to limit the greenhouse gas emissions from such projects as power plants that are warming the planet and threatening the bears.
Environmental groups brought suit to force the listing last week, in the Northern District of California. Energy producers, car companies, and a host of other industrial concerns should be seeking to either intervene in this suit asap or bring a challenge in the D.C. Circuit against this abuse of the law in order to block a settlement that lists the bear and brings a huge new raft of regulations governing global warming to every new plant start-up or expansion. Every federal action that could lead to an increase in the output of hydrocarbons could be impacted by the polar bear listing, including highway construction and public lands leasing.
Previous posts on the polar bear and the ESA are
here and
here.