Getting the Bush administration to recognize reality on any front can be difficult. When it comes to acknowledging the human contribution to global warming -- a fact that puts an unfortunate spin on Bush's pals in the fossil fuel business -- reality is even harder to find. While Bush has often paid lip service to biofuels, even mentioning ideas like cellulosic ethanol, these quick mentions have served as smokescreens for billions of dollars in government support for industries that are already the most profitable in the world.
One of areas where Bush and the rest of the Republicans have been most adamant is in resisting regulation of CO2 production. Not only did they dismiss any idea of joining Kyoto, they've also buried ideas of instituting domestic limits, opting instead for "voluntary" limitations.
So who could bring Bush to the table and force him to confront the damage that global warming is doing to the world? How about the world's largest land predator?
The Bush Administration conceded yesterday that global warming is threatening the polar bear with extinction, the first time that it has singled out climate change as a grave threat to the Arctic and its most iconic inhabitant.
In a move that will have profound consequences not only for the polar bear but potentially for America’s polluting industries, the Administration declared last night that the polar bear should be added to its endangered species list because of the drastic melting of its habitat.
While protecting many endangered species can be done by limiting access to certain areas, or restricting hunting, there's a recognition that saving the polar bear requires saving its habit -- the mass of floating sea ice on which the bears live and hunt.
By placing the polar bear under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, the US Government must prevent any activity that could further jeopardise the animal or its habitat. Environmentalists hope that the move will therefore compel the Administration to force US industries into cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
This is only the first step in what is bound to be a long legal process, but it's also a significant step that includes an acknowledgment that global warming is a direct threat to wildlife habitat.
It also won't hurt to have the polar bear as an icon of the global warming threat. The animated polar bear, lost in an ice-free arctic, was one of the most memorable images from Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and it will serve well in publicizing this issue.