Global warming is destroying the polar bear habitat, so how can drilling in their environment hurt them anymore?

Two conservation groups filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the Bush administration's decision to let oil companies unintentionally harass or harm polar bears and walruses off the northwestern Alaska coast.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage claims that federal officials violated laws designed to protect the animals and their sensitive habitat in the Arctic waters of the Chukchi Sea.

"These regulations set the parameters for how oil exploration will be done in the next five years," said Brendan Cummings, oceans program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the suit along with Pacific Environment. "The Chukchi Sea is critical habitat for those animals. For them to survive in the face of global warming, we simply cannot allow oil development there."

Last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided to grant legal protection to seven oil companies in the Chukchi over the next five years should they accidentally harm "small numbers" of polar bears or Pacific walruses while drilling or during other exploratory activities. The agency is named as a defendant in the suit, along with Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

Fish and Wildlife Service officials said oil and gas exploration will have a negligible effect on the bear and walrus populations. Global warming is most likely to cause the animals' numbers to dwindle, the agency said.

So essentially what the government is telling us is that since these animals are doomed anyhow then how much more harm can it do to allow oil companies to continue to invade their environment?

What the oil companies and this administration continue to ignore however is that drilling for new oil right now is going to do nothing to bring prices down or get more oil available in time to impact our domestic supply for at least fifteen to twenty years. And then it will probably only bring the price down about two pennies per gallon of gas. That is not the solution that this country is looking for.

It is time to leave the polar bears alone and look for viable energy sources that do not destroy our environment or kill our endangered creatures.