Word: polarization
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...when teachers and students at over 1,500 campuses gathered to discuss global warming - and find a solution. It was less a protest that a nationwide seminar - albeit one that included the occasional colorful stunt, like the student from University of California, San Diego, who dressed as a polar bear and sat in a mock electric chair, to illustrate how global warming could speed extinction. The message was clear: Global warming is not a problem for tomorrow, but today, and students need to take the lead. "We owe our young people a choice, because this will affect the rest...
...Wallach and his allies began to shift local opinion by showing that going green wasn't just about climate change or saving the polar bears, it was about cutting waste and saving on rising fuel bills, building a stronger and more resilient town with a sustainable economy. Those arguments made sense even in one of the reddest states of the U.S. "Our old church sometimes cost up to $1,000 a month to heat," says George, who plans to build back his church to the highest green standards. "Now, I'm not a tree-hugger by any means...
...More so than many of their European counterparts, America's new environmentalists believe climate change is about more than saving the environment. They care about polar bears, but like Schwarzenegger, they also view global warming as an economic challenge and opportunity - an outlook shared by a growing number of U.S. businesses. Last year some of the country's most influential corporations - including GE, DuPont and the power company NRG - formed the U.S. Climate Action Partnership to lobby Washington for a carbon cap-and-trade system. "This has to be a top domestic issue," says NRG CEO David Crane. "We have...
...fate of the polar bear goes beyond a single oil and gas project. If the species is declared threatened, FWS will have responsibilities under the Endangered Species Act to protect the bears from their main danger - in this case, climate change. That means the government could be challenged legally for anything that increases carbon dioxide emissions - like a new coal power plant - on the grounds that further climate change would further endanger the polar bear. "It would be the first time that the Bush Administration would recognize that global warming had a significant and specific impact on a living being...
That's a positive spin, but the reality is that FWS will only have limited ability to deal with global warming - and the polar bear is only the first of countless millions of species that could be forced into extinction because of rising temperatures. Conservationists are facing the depressing possibility that all the effort of the past several decades to save endangered species - controlling poaching, creating wildlife reserves, banning animal trade - may be for naught if climate change continues unchecked. In a drastically warmer world, habitats for many species - like the polar bear - could simply disappear, taking the animals with...