Alaska is fighting to block polar bear protections

"The application for this listing is based on the unfounded, unproven scientific hypotheses that climate change is caused by human activity, in the form of increased release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere," said House Speaker John Harris, a Valdez Republican.

That's a view in contrast to world climate experts who made up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They reported in February that global warming "very likely" is caused by human use of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal.

Environmental groups say that unless countermeasures are taken, warming will melt the prime habitat of polar bears. Even if sea ice does not disappear, they say, warming could push its edge well beyond the continental shelf, creating a watery barrier or hazard for polar bears trying to reach sea ice or land.

Sea ice loss so far has not meant fewer polar bears, Johnson said. According to testimony submitted by Palin administration officials, even a 30 percent decline in the total population of polar bears within 35 to 50 years, as predicted by the polar bear group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, the world's largest conservation network, is not enough to warrant a listing. Such a drop "does not result in a population that is threatened with extinction," they contend.

Polar bears have survived two historic periods of warming and likely can do it again, Johnson said. He not so sure, he said, that Alaska could survive the polar bear being listed.

Alaska's economy is fueled by petroleum, and elected officials fear that a polar bear recovery plan, plus the third-party lawsuits it would spawn, could gum up Arctic resource development and the next hoped-for boom, a pipeline to carry 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas to customers in the Lower 48 states.

Roughly 85 percent of Alaska's general fund money comes from royalties and taxes on the oil industry, but the trans-Alaska pipeline has for years been running less than half full as reserves dwindle down. It has been political suicide for a politician to suggest instituting an income tax or tapping the earnings of the Alaska Permanent Fund, a $38 billion bank account that provides residents with an annual check. So the Legislature and the governor are pushing for a natural gas pipeline that will provide continued pain-free income, not to mention jobs.

"It is important that we prevent listing the polar bear as threatened, not only because the designation is not clearly supported by science but because it will be used as leverage to stop development projects across the country, including our own natural gas pipeline," said Sen. Gary Wilken, R-Fairbanks.

Conservation groups call the state's position an attempt to manufacture uncertainty where none exists.