Tell me again, is the problem for the polar bears too little ice or too much? It was fears of disappearing habitat, though unsupported by sound science, that recently led to official listing of the bears as a threatened species, with all the carbon-fearing, economy-slowing litigation that is sure to follow. But nobody told the ad agency for the Denver Zoo. Idling at a stoplight behind an RTD bus the other day, as we both spewed CO2 into the fragile ecosphere, I noticed above the tailpipe a zoo poster with the slogan, "Every time you visit, you help animals," and a cute drawing of someone's hand sawing a hole in the ice as a grateful (and presumably otherwise unfed) polar bear looks on.
Memo to Zoo & RTD: You're three decades out of date. Global cooling and encroaching glaciers was the panic of the 1970s. Today's crisis is the opposite, a sweltering planet and disappearing ice caps. Get back on message there.
No big deal, though. The villains are we greedy, heartless human beings either way. It's exactly as the pro-energy side is trying to warn in connection with Gov. Ritter's new rules to impede oil and gas production: "Certain species are covered. People are not."