What We Do to Polar Bears, We Do to Ourselves. Commentary by Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation, September 10, 2008. "It wasn't much noticed at the time, but three weeks before she was chosen as John McCain's… running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin played a key supporting role in the latest episode of the Bush Administration's eight-year war on the Endangered Species Act… What's missing from most discussions about endangered species is that preserving other species is not an act of charity; it is essential to our own survival… 'Polar bears hold tremendous value to medicine, for example,' explains [Aaron] Bernstein, [a fellow at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard]. 'There is something about the metabolism of female polar bears that allows them to put on tremendous amounts of fat before winter but not become Type 2 diabetic. We don't understand how they do it yet, but this research is hugely important for the tens of millions of people who suffer from Type 2 diabetes'… Without ants (and countless other underground species that will never be the subject of impassioned environmental appeals) to ventilate the soil, the earth would rot, halting food production. Without trees and other elements of a healthy forest, water supplies would shrink. Take away coral reefs and you destroy the bottom of the marine food chain. Global warming is on track to make as much as one-quarter of all plant and animal species on earth extinct by 2040, threatening general ecosystem collapse. To study the natural world is to realize… that everything is connected. What we do to the polar bears, we do to ourselves."
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