A snowball fight on thin ice

Environmental interests and the Bush administration got caught up in a war of words as polar bears were declared a threatened species by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

Suddenly, the best possible solution materialized as a gauzy tableau: One hungry polar bear, a Bush administration lawyer and an environmental bloviator stranded on a shrinking ice floe in the wind-swept Arctic Ocean.We are cheering for the fuzzy, charismatic megafauna with the snowball countenance and the lump-of-coal nose.

To the extent one can elbow aside a 900-pound carnivore with territorial issues, the polar bear was almost not in the room for Wednesday's announcement.

Kempthorne worked hard to hit a regulatory and political double. He wanted credit for acknowledging the polar bears were in trouble and needed protection via the Endangered Species Act. Disappearing Arctic sea ice is limiting the hunting range of the polar bears. Forced onto land, they do not do well.

At the same time, Kempthorne strained mightily to insist there is no connection between the diminished Arctic sea ice and global warming. Then he topped the ESA designation with an exemption to allow oil and gas exploration to continue.

Environmental groups protested loudly. They were shocked — shocked — that it would be difficult to exploit the artful language employed by the Bush administration to create an admission that greenhouse gases and global warming imperiled the bears, if not the planet.

A respite for the polar bears, a disappointment for green lawyers and no apparent progress by a Bush administration in lonely denial about climate change.

Washington Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island, has introduced legislation with a more direct link to the topic. He wants "vast improvements in oil-spill technology," before massive oil and gas activity would be allowed in Alaska's Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

His message is on point and connected to the health and welfare of a threatened marine mammal.