Photo by Vladimir Gorbunov.

Welcome back to Pacific Environment’s blog in 2008.  Over the next year, check back to this blog to find interesting tidbits and news related to our work to protect the Pacific Rim environment!

A couple of items caught my eye in the last couple of days.  First of all, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delayed its decision about whether to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act.  Supposedly the delay is to allow the Service to consider new scientific studies.  Yet the studies – which demonstrate sea ice in the Arctic receding even more rapidly than originally thought – only confirm the critical need to act now.

The Fish and Wildlife Service’s delay in making a decision now allows the Minerals Management Service to proceed unhindered with a proposed oil and gas lease sale in the Chukchi Sea in February.  Recent news articles suggest that both Exxon and Shell are interested in the lease sale.  Is it coincidence that the Fish and Wildlife Service’s delay allows the government to move forward with this lease, which will only increase the threats to the polar bears?  I think not. Click here to read a press release from our partners at Center for Biological Diversity or click here for an article that explains the connection between the polar bear delay and the Chukchi lease sale.

We fiddle while the Arctic burns.

Meanwhile, at least South Korea is taking some action.  Click here to learn that South Korea is taking action to ban single-hulled tankers by 2010, following its disastrous oil spill last month.  Wait, you say, weren’t single-hulled tankers banned after the Exxon Valdez?  No, unfortunately not.  The Valdez spill led to an international agreement to phase out single-hulled tankers by 2015.  Now, South Korea is making a commitment to moving up that timeline.  Sometimes it takes an accident like they experienced to force action.  We could learn something from Korea.