And Now, A Bear Market In Oil

Energy Policy: A key Democrat wants the polar bear to be declared an endangered species to block offshore oil development in Alaska. The only thing endangered by drilling there is our dependence on foreign oil.

Energy independence rivals weather as the thing everybody talks about but nobody does anything about. Particularly Democrats. President Bush, recently seen asking the Saudis to increase their oil production, is at least trying to do something.

His administration plans on Feb. 6 to sell oil drilling rights in the Chukchi Sea, an area off the Northwest coast of Alaska. The Chukchi Sea is believed to contain 15 billion barrels of badly needed oil and 76 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

But it's also home to polar bears, and Rep. Ed Markey says "we shouldn't be selling the drilling rights in this important polar bear habitat before deciding how we are going to protect them."

The Massachusetts Democrat is chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

He charges that the Interior Department, specifically the Fish and Wildlife Service, is dragging its feet on a request to declare the polar endangered under the Endangered Species Act because of melting polar ice due to global warming.

If oil and gas development in the Chukchi Sea is allowed, Markey claims, "we will be accelerating the day when the polar bear will be extinct."

The alleged harm to local wildlife is what has blocked oil and gas development in the frozen tundra of a small portion of the nearby Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Never mind that three decades of oil production, more than 15 billion barrels, have not rendered the caribou extinct. In fact, they are thriving.

Randall Luthi, director of the Minerals Management Service, which is conducting the oil lease sales, testified at a hearing Thursday that the bear is already adequately protected against harm from oil and gas development under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The lease sales include provisions to mitigate any impact on the bear population, he said.

We suspect Markey and his brethren aren't really interested in that. What they're interested in is shutting down domestic energy production at the same time they give lip service to energy independence. They will use every bogus argument, including global warming and endangered polar bears, to accomplish that.

On Jan. 9, Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall postponed a decision on listing the polar bear as endangered. "It's not just making the decision," he said, "it's making it clear and why." More time is needed to examine thousands of comments on the issue, he concluded.

Some of those comments are from Mitch Taylor, a polar bear biologist with the government of Nunavut, a territory in Canada. According to Taylor and contrary to greenie hype, climate change, particularly in the Arctic, is not pushing bears to the brink of extinction. They have and will continue to adapt to their environment.

In a 12-page report to the Fish and Wildlife Service, Taylor stated: "No evidence exists that suggests that both bears and the conservation systems that regulate them will not adapt and respond to the new conditions."

Taylor emphasized polar bears' adaptability, saying they evolved from grizzlies about 250,000 years ago and developed as a distinct species 125,000 years ago when natural climate change occurred.

Writing in the Toronto Star recently, Taylor opined: "Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or are increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present."

The current population of polar bears is said to be "dwindling" at 22,000 to 25,000. A half-century ago, before SUVs doomed the planet, polar bears numbered only 8,000 to 10,000, according to science writer Theo Richel. They, too, seem to be thriving.

Taylor says that "it is just silly to predict the demise of polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria." It's even sillier to base our energy policy on it.