Whatever the merits of the global warming science and politics underlying the push to list polar bears as endangered species , I’m all in favor of saving them if they really are in trouble. As longtime Corner readers know, I’m far more sympathetic to intervening on a case by case basis than I am to the religious/holistic/Marxist cases for throwing a wet-blanket on global capitalism in the name of curbing greenhouse gas emissions. This is not to say reasonable anti-pollution regulations aren’t a good idea, etc etc, blah blah blah. We can have all those arguments later.

Here’s what I’m getting at: If the polar bears need more floating ice to survive, let’s get them some more floating ice! Like artificial reefs, we can build fake floating ice, or make real floating ice, and distribute it across the polar bear habitat. Mightn’t this be expensive? you ask. I dunno maybe. I haven’t priced artificial polar bear ice platforms lately. But I will bet you dollars to doughnuts it would cost a mere fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the cost of a Kyoto regime and it would save vastly more polar bears than Kyoto would — at least in, say, the first couple centuries. For all I know, the seals would dig the new digs too. And maybe we could expand the program to the antarctic for the penguins.

While the science here may be as “flawed” as the science of volcano lancing,* I’m actualy quite serious. If we stopped greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, does anybody really think that ice would suddenly re-form at the poles in time to save polar bears from drowning? This isn’t an episode of Superfriends, people. This is the real world. So let’s drop this gaia stuff and save some polar bears. You have my suggestion. Come up with your own. But spare me the nonsense that we’ll save these nifty beasts if we all ride our bikes to work.

* Don’t get me started on the scientific establishment’s willful blindness to the genius of airborne laser volcano lancing. I am a prophet without honor on this subject.