Is the Polar Bear the Ping-Pong of the Climate Crisis?

For years the U.S. officially declined to admit that China existed. Communist China, that is. China was treated as Cuba was and still is--no travel, no diplomatic relations, and no official recognition. The change came in the Nixon administration. Nixon had been a leader in denying China, a "hard-liner." Eventually he would be the first U.S. President to officially visit Communist China, beginning the relationship that has become so important to both countries. His prior hard line, many said, made him the appropriate president to do so, since he was above reproach politically on this matter. Hence the Vulcan proverb, "Only Nixon can go to China."

But before Nixon went, the first sign of a new approach, the first test of a new relationship, was the seemingly innocuous exchange of ping-pong players, a very big sport in China then. When American ping-pong players played the Chinese in China, it was a cautious first step.

For its entire time in office, the Bush administration has denied the reality of the Climate Crisis. It has prevented scientists from warning of its dangers and its causes, and it has opposed all efforts to regulate the principal cause, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning, because doing so, Bush said, would wreck the U.S. capitalist economy. Among the world's nations, Bush's America has been just about the last remaining hard-liner.

But Wednesday the Bush administration announced it would seek to declare the polar bear a threatened species. To do so, it had to say why the polar bear is threatened with extinction. And this led to what the Washington Post described as "the first time the administration has identified climate change as the driving force behind the potential demise of a species. "

As the Post story notes, the polar bear is among the best known and best loved animals in the world, especially by children. The story also notes that some environmentalists and wildlife biologists believe this is too little too late. I heard one say on TV yesterday that he doesn't see how the polar bear survives--that its extinction is almost certain.

But it will be interesting to see if admitting that the Arctic is getting warmer is linked to the generally recognized reason. As the Post put it, Because scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide from power-plant and vehicle emissions is helping drive climate change worldwide, putting polar bears on the endangered species list raises the legal question of whether the government would be required to compel U.S. industries to curb their carbon dioxide output.

Whether the federal government is required by law to regular CO2 emissions is in fact the issue in a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court. How all of this plays out in the days and months ahead will tell us more clearly what this move means--and whether this was an attempted ping-pong play leading to recognizing the reality of the Climate Crisis, and taking action.