Posted on 08/05/2005 10:43:26 PM PDT by neverdem
The polar bear has become the new poster animal for environmentalists, and I can understand why. When it comes to "charismatic megafauna" - the term used by marketing experts at conservation groups - the bear is a giant improvement over the giant panda.
The rotund panda may be cuddlier, but it is really more of a poster animal for gluttony and sloth. In the wild, it eats 12 hours a day and spends the rest of the time sleeping or hiding. In captivity, it can barely stir itself even to mate - Mei Xiang had to be artificially inseminated to produce her new cub at the National Zoo.
Yes, Mei Xiang can draw crowds to the zoo, but does her lolling inspire much zeal for preserving the species? The message she sends is, "I don't care, so why should you?"
Polar bears are mammals with a mission, whether it's Gus obsessively swimming in the Central Park Zoo, or the mother and her cub that I once followed during a dogsled expedition here in the Canadian high Arctic. We watched her with awe and kept our distance, especially after coming across the bloody remnants of her seal dinner on the ice. The message I took home was: "You mess with my habitat, and I'll mess with you."
Besides their natural charisma, the bears have another crucial asset for a poster animal: location. Because the Arctic is projected to feel the effects of global warming sooner and more severely than temperate regions, the recent shrinking of sea ice in the Arctic has been promoted as a grim harbinger for the planet.
The polar bear has become, in the words of the WWF conservation...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This is a heresy against environmentalism, and undermining it as the new religion of the left. Tierney must be giving his bosses and most of the Times' regular readers no end of grief.
I can't BEAR these stories.
SUBTITLE: "Environmentalists are polarized"
Alternate Subtitle: No Warm Reception Expected
I THOUGHT YOU SAID THE PANDAS LIKED LOLLING AROUND
How did you get that subtitle? Let me guess. You didn't read the entire article, so you couldn't notice one of the references that he cited, Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media by Patrick J. Michaels. Cato Institute, 271 pp., November 2004.. Check Recycling Is Garbage by the same author, Mr. Tierney.
I had the same reaction, though the purse made me chuckle the most.
My apologies.
A good pun shoud be recognized fairly easily.
Since the article contains a reference to polar bears, i should have worded it:
SUBTITLE: "Environmentalists are POLARized".
Thank you for the correction! I don't enjoy it when friends are misunderstood.
Where's the remote, the chips and the six pack?
But isn't the pipeline killing all the bears?
That link on recycling is great.
Thank you.
Yes, indeed. The bears thrive alongside the pipline.
Polar bears do just fine in warmer climates. There was one a couple years ago that walked all the way from Barrow to Valdez.
Interesting. I didn't know that.
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