Sat, May 17, 2008 (2:07 a.m.)

The Interior Department has listed Alaska’s polar bear population as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, but the Bush administration has added administrative rules and guidelines to the listing to ensure it “isn’t abused to make global warming policies.”

In announcing the bear’s listing Wednesday, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said, “While the legal standards under the (Endangered Species Act) compel me to list the polar bear as threatened, I want to make clear that this listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting.”

Kempthorne said U.S. Geological Survey scientists have determined there has been a record decline in the past 30 years in Arctic sea ice — the polar bears’ primary habitat — and that continued global warming likely will accelerate such melting in the future. Government researchers have projected that 97 percent of the ice could be lost by the end of the 21st century and that two-thirds of the Arctic polar bears could disappear by 2050.

Environmental and conservation groups had hoped that along with protecting the bear, the listing would have a chilling effect on oil and gas exploration in the region and on the operations of coal-fired power plants, whose emissions contribute mightily to global warming that, in turn, destroys the bears’ habitat.

Activists and Democratic lawmakers were disappointed, however, when Kempthorne emphasized Wednesday that administrative limits would allow the United States “to continue to develop our natural resources in the Arctic region in an environmentally sound way.” He also reiterated the Bush administration’s stance that the Endangered Species Act “is not the right tool to set U.S. climate policy.”

We wonder whether the Bush administration would recognize the “right tool” if it dropped onto the floor of the Oval Office.

While protecting the polar bear and its rapidly diminishing habitat shouldn’t be the sole manner of setting America’s global warming policy, it cannot be excluded from such discussions, either. Increasing emissions through new coal-fired plants and exploratory gas and oil drilling in such sensitive regions as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge could have detrimental effects on the bear’s already diminishing habitat.

Failing to offer the polar bear and its habitat the full protections afforded under a threatened listing does little to truly protect its future.