Palin — Who Needs Polar Bears When You Have Oil?

Scott Schliebe, USFWS

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin says there are just too many darn Polar Bears. She is suing the Federal government, which put the pesky critters on the Threatened Species List. Why? Your Threatened Species beasties can wander over and seriously interfere with the drilling of oil.

Dan Joling of Associated Press asked Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity about the Governor’s remarks:

She’s either grossly misinformed or intentionally misleading, and both are unbecoming. Alaska deserves better. Even the Bush administration can’t deny the reality of global warming. The governor is aligning herself and the state of Alaska with the most discredited, fringe, extreme viewpoints by denying this.


In fact, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, a Bush appointee, made the decision due to the record low shrinkage of sea ice, 40 percent less than it was in 1979, with further shrinkage forecast. The area of Arctic sea ice is at the secornd-lowest point on record. In some places there is so little sea ice that Polar Bears are drowning. Sea ice is Polar Bear habitat; this also makes them marine mammals, under jurisdiction of the Federal government, not the states.

Secretary Kempthorne threw in some regulatory weasel words to appease Governor Palin and her oil and gas cronies, and now the Interior Department may face lawsuits from conservationists as well as the State of Alaska.

One thing is for sure: when he made Sarah Palin his Republican Veep pick, Senator McCain definitely lost the all-important Polar Bear vote.