Polar Bears

Polar Bears have been put on the endangered list.

Whoop-ti-doo.

I'm trying my best to figure out why we should give a damn. There's just a few thousand left in the entire world, and as a species are about to join the long list of lifeforms that have come and gone on this planet.

We are told that over 99% of the hundreds of thousands of lifeforms ever to be created on earth are now extinct. No doubt humans will one day be extinct also, and I worry much more about that than I do the polar bears, which is not at all.

Tell me what polar bears have contributed to anything you can possibly imagine. They sleep half the year away, and then go kill and eat a few seals for the other half. Their total contribution to mankind has been the scattering of trash in far northern city dumps... that's about it. Maybe at some time in the past they provided Eskimos with bear skin rugs and clothing. And bear claw necklaces for the local macho dude natives.

But the Eskimos all live on government subsidies now, so the only possible justification for keeping them around has vanished.

No, I'm wrong... keeping them around keeps a few polar bear lovers and researchers employed, the kind of people who exist on government research grants. Those grants would be tax money, our money.

If you actually believe they may have something vital and critical to offer humanity in the future, freeze up some polar bear eggs and sperm someplace and let future humanity figure out what it might be.

Let them go the way of the Dodo. After all, it would be Nature's way. And we have better things to do with the money.