By Damien Schiff

With the federal government's decision on whether to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act expected at any moment, it seems appropriate to step back and assess what the larger consequences of a listing would be for the American people.

Most folks are at least vaguely in favor of protecting the polar bear.

They're willing to sacrifice, through increased regulation and taxes, to bring about that goal. But the public's eagerness to chip in isn't without limit, and few people realize the far-reaching ramifications of a polar bear listing.

The principal basis advanced for protecting the polar bear is that its ice habitat is melting away due to increases in global temperatures.

The environmental groups that are advocating the polar bear's listing contend the temperature increases are in part a function of man-made changes to the environment — most important, the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Now, it's entirely possible that the Fish and Wildlife Service — the federal agency that will make the decision whether to protect the polar bear — will list the bear, but will not give the exact cause of the bear's loss of habitat.

Even if the service ducks the climate change issue, it's unquestionable the issue of global warming and man's role in it will be raised in follow-up litigation.

Section 10 of the Endangered Species Act lets private citizens sue anyone, including government agencies, for violating the act.

Hence, environmentalists would be able to sue the Environmental Protection Agency to make it issue regulations substantially restricting car emissions, on the theory that those emissions contribute to climate change and reduce the polar bear's habitat.

And how would a court adjudicate that kind of a lawsuit? Very simply: It would have to decide whether man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming.

Yes, that's right — what is perhaps the most contentious scientific issue of our time would be placed for decision before a few unelected federal judges, whose judgments would bind entire federal agencies and, through their own regulations, the American people.

That's a profoundly undemocratic result — and at odds with the Supreme Court's most recent statement on global warming, in last term's Massachusetts v. EPA.

Massachusetts had sued the EPA to force it to issue new regulations controlling auto emissions.

The high court ruled that Massachusetts could bring such a suit, but the court also cautioned that it has "neither the expertise nor the authority to evaluate . . . policy judgments." And it emphasized that it's EPA's judgment — not the judiciary's — that must matter primarily when it comes to the global warming debate.

A polar bear listing might change all that. The root of the problem lies not so much with the nation's environmental laws, but rather with the aims of a few select environmentalist organizations whose purpose is all too often to use existing environmental regulation, and lawsuits enforcing regulation, as a pretext for achieving policy results that could not be reached by petitioning Congress or the state legislatures.

One result of their strategy could be draconian limitations on greenhouse gas emissions.

In short, the cries to save the polar bear through the Endangered Species Act may be as much the attempt of environmental activists to impose their view of man's relationship to the earth on the American people through the courts as it is the fruit of a sincere desire to save a remarkably persistent Arctic mammal.

Source:  IBD Editorials