While most of the world wasn't watching, hundreds of species of animals, birds, plants and sea life have been slowly vanishing or clinging perilously to survival.
Now that the largest land carnivore, the polar bear, is in the throes of trying to survive, perhaps the public will be stirred into an outcry about threats to the picturesque white giant's existence.
President Bush must comply this week with a court order to decide whether to list the polar bear as an endangered species. If Bush treats the polar bear as he has the whole issue of endangered species and greenhouse gases, odds are he'll avoid listing polar bears as "endangered" to avoid giving their habitat rigorous protection. Instead, he likely will list them as "threatened" and relieve himself of an all-out effort to improve the bear's surroundings.
To genuinely protect the bears, their arctic habitat would essentially be off-limits to oil drilling that petroleum companies want to conduct, especially in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska.
A listing of "endangered" also would force Bush to finally recognize the principal force in the alarming shrinkage of the Arctic ice cap by 25 percent since 1979—greenhouse gases. Polar bears use sea ice as platforms to hunt seals. Scientists have found significant hunger among polar bears because of vanishing sea ice.
At his daughter Jenna's wedding last weekend, the president said he anticipates being a grandfather. Sadly, his grandchildren probably will be deprived of seeing some species that died because of their grandfather's loyalty to polluting industry rather than to nature.