Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity answers questions | Grist | InterActivist

Questions from Grist editors | Questions from readers

What happens legally when we declare a species threatened? What actions would the administration be promising to take if they concede that polar bears are, in fact, threatened? -- Adrienne LaBombard, West Lebanon, N.H.

Kassie Siegel, Center for Biological Diversity.

The protections of the Endangered Species Act work extremely well, making it our strongest and best law for the recovery of plants and animals on the brink of extinction. First, it requires that federal agencies must ensure that any action they authorize, fund, or carry out will not jeopardize the survival of a listed species, or adversely modify its critical habitat. Another protection is that individuals and corporations are prohibited from killing, harming, or harassing a listed species, and this includes impacting their habitat in a way that harms them. The government must also prepare a recovery plan that sets forth the actions needed to recover the species to the point where it is no longer in danger of extinction. A listing under the Endangered Species Act also typically results in the direction of additional research efforts to study the conservation and management of the species.

These provisions have all been enforced for decades in the context of threats other than global warming. They will clearly provide additional protection to polar bears from threats such as direct habitat destruction or disturbance of the bears. For example, oil and gas development in polar-bear habitat will be subject to a higher level of environmental review with respect to polar bears if they are listed under the Endangered Species Act than it would be if they were not listed.

However, the Endangered Species Act listing for the polar bear should also help directly address the primary threat to the species: greenhouse-gas pollution. For example, if a federal agency is approving a coal-fired power plant in Texas, I believe that the agency will need to analyze the impact of that plant's emissions on polar bears, and ensure that the plant will not jeopardize the species. It's quite clear that the cumulative impact of coal-fired power plants does jeopardize the continued existence of polar bears, so I believe that the federal agency could not lawfully approve the project unless it found a way to avoid or mitigate those emissions. The Endangered Species Act has not been enforced this way before -- but there's no reason it shouldn't be, because the whole purpose of the law is to identify, and then remove, threats to listed species. Bush administration officials have stated that greenhouse-gas emissions are "beyond the scope" of the Endangered Species Act. But I disagree vehemently.

Other than finding a cure for global warming, what do you consider to be the most important step to take to reduce habitat loss for polar bears? -- J. Fleming, Northport, N.Y.

Reducing industrial activity like oil and gas development is a very important step. Oil and gas development in polar-bear habitat is a double threat to the species -- both because of the potential for direct harm to the bears and because the fossil-fuel development will lead to further emissions.

Another very grave threat, though, which is less well-recognized is increased shipping in the Arctic as the sea ice continues to melt. This poses a triple threat: first, the bears may be harmed by disturbance or by an oil spill; second, the ships produce greenhouse-gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels for their power supply; and third, the ships may introduce soot directly into the Arctic, which contributes greatly to warming by darkening the surface of snow and ice, decreasing its reflectivity, and causing it to absorb more solar radiation. Shipping in the Arctic deserves extremely sharp scrutiny and regulation, and perhaps an outright ban.

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Is it possible to get emperor penguins listed as endangered due to ice melting as well? -- Mary Smith, San Francisco, Calif.

Yes! The warming and melting that has already occurred on the Antarctic Peninsula, and the future warming that will occur in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, is cited as one of the primary threats in our petition to list the emperor and 11 other species of penguins under the Endangered Species Act, which we submitted in November 2006.

How can science teachers address the current administration's censorship of good science? -- Steven Madewell, Washington, D.C.

A few great resources for developing curricula:

Climate Science Watch is a great site founded by Rick Piltz, who resigned from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program in 2005 in protest over political interference and censorship.

The Union of Concerned Scientists also has a terrific site dedicated to political interference in science, and also a new report on the global-warming disinformation campaign funded largely by ExxonMobil. See also ExxonSecrets.org.

You can also download curricula from Participate.net, and obtain a free copy of An Inconvenient Truth, which is an extraordinary introduction to the science, to show to your class. Or you could invite one of the volunteers trained by the Climate Project to give a slideshow in person.

How do you propose to institute a federal law capping and then rapidly reducing greenhouse-gas pollution in this country when President Bush is going just the opposite way and cares nothing about the environment? -- Janet Baca, Kingman, Ariz.

I believe that once a majority of our fellow Americans realize the severity of the climate crisis, and realize that the solutions to it are also things that will make our world cleaner, safer, freer, and more equitable, that Americans will demand a law to rapidly reduce emissions. Drawing attention to the plight of the polar bear is just one small part of building the political momentum for this to happen.

How many Center for Biological Diversity employees are fighting global warming daily by not driving themselves to work? How much has the Center cut (or grown) its own energy use at offices, for air travel, etc.? -- T. Jones, Tucson, Ariz.

We actually have an extremely high proportion of staff that telecommute, walk, bike, or take public transportation to work. In our San Francisco office, for example, there is not a single person who drives to work, and in our Tucson office those who must are in the small minority.

The Center also tracks its own greenhouse-gas footprint, which helps us determine how well the measures we are instituting are working. Those measures include reducing electricity use in lighting and office equipment, installing solar panels at our offices, attempting to reduce travel and switching to less carbon-intensive travel, etc. While reducing emissions in the first place is the most important step, we can then purchase greenhouse-gas offsets for the emissions we are not able to eliminate. I am working on a new feature for our website that will explain what we have done, how we have done it, and how others can do it as well.

My search for environmental work in a field that isn't in a cubicle has been a long and uneventful one. What advice can you give young idealists who are trying to break into the field and find something that can spark the same kind of passion you have? -- Raymond Shanklin, Seattle, Wash.

Many of us live with the contradiction of trying to protect the natural world by staring at a computer screen -- if this is not for you, then it will probably take more work to figure out exactly what job will be productive and satisfying. But once you've figured that out, I would advise finding a way to just start doing it, even if it means volunteering and waiting tables at night or otherwise earning enough to get by. Acquire skills and make yourself indispensable to an organization, and a job with a living wage will likely follow. This is how I, and many of my colleagues, obtained our positions -- we started volunteering and never left.

If everyone drove more fuel-efficient cars, would it really make that much of a difference, in terms of the effect on global warming? -- Nancy Kangas, Columbus, Ohio

Yes, it would make an enormous difference. The transportation sector is responsible for one-third of total U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions. Switching from an SUV to a small hybrid car can cut an individual's transportation emissions by 70 percent. Imagine the reduction we would make if everyone did this. Even more important, though: the government needs to increase fuel-economy standards. Under pressure from the automobile industry, fuel economy actually declined slightly between 1992 and 2002, and the U.S. has the lowest fuel-economy standards of any industrialized nation in the world.

Even worse, after California enacted a new law to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles, the automobile industry sued to block its implementation. California's law would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles by 30 percent as compared to 2002 standards, would save consumers money, would result in a positive overall impact to the California economy, and would still be less stringent in 2014 than China's regulations are today. Yet General Motors, Ford, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, and others are suing to block the law.

So in my opinion, your energies would be best directed at letting your senators and representatives know that you demand higher federal fuel-economy standards, and other measures that will reduce greenhouse-gas pollution!

Do you think the Fish and Wildlife Service should spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to have people sort through the form letters and modified form letters that e-activists send in? Could their time and resources be better spent focusing on the critters and the science instead of the burden of analyzing duplicative emails that add little substance to the decision-making process? -- Stuart Shulman, Pittsburgh, Pa.

I think it is essential for the Fish and Wildlife Service to receive people's comments on the polar bear and other species. Many people are so busy that the only practical way for them to voice their opinion is through a conservation group's action alert -- but their opinions are still very important. I trust that Fish and Wildlife Service staff can sort through these letters without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. Perhaps it takes staff a few days to sort them, but I believe that the public's right to participate in the process is well worth the effort.

That photo of the cuddling polar bear cubs is great. How did photographer Jenny E. Ross manage to get close enough to take it without being eaten by the cubs' mother? -- Ron Steenblik, Paris, France

Jenny answers that question in her slideshow presentation "Life on Thin Ice: Polar Bear Biology, Ecology, Behavior, and Conservation," and so I'm afraid that answering it on this forum would be a bit like telling the end of a movie that people haven't seen yet. You can and ask though, or check out her website.

The Bush administration has in some ways galvanized the environmental community. Will you keep up the pressure if the Democrats take the White House? -- Randy Marlatt, Flagstaff, Ariz.

Absolutely.

Questions from Grist editors | Questions from readers

The Voyage of the Siegel

Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity answers readers' questions