On May 14, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced that the Department of the Interior had classified the polar bear as a threatened species, giving the bears protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The decision was itself momentous, the first listing of a species under the ESA in which the threat is identified as anthropogenic climate change.

While the Interior Department took administrative steps to prevent the listing of the polar bear from being used either to prevent Arctic development or to institute greenhouse gas controls, it is unclear whether such provisions will persist in the face of continual challenges from environmental groups, which have pledged to demolish the cautionary provisions and use the ESA to force the federal government into controlling greenhouse gas emissions and preventing the development of Arctic resources.

Join us for a discussion of the implications of the polar bear’s endangerment listing. Case Western Reserve professor of environmental law Jonathan Adler and Bryan Arroyo, Assistant Director for the Endangered Species Program for the Fish & Wildlife Service will speak. AEI resident scholar Kenneth P. Green will moderate.