Help Protect Polar Bears from Oil Drilling Disaster in the Arctic, and Get Us on Track to a Clean Energy Future

Credit: The Toronto Zoo

A cuddly ball of white fur is rolling around the Toronto Zoo this week, as zoo keepers introduced their new polar bear cub to the public on Friday. The cub—which was born prematurely and rejected by its mother—has recently learned to walk and play, spreading smiles across the faces of zoo visitors. While this adorable cub seems happy enough, we must do more to protect polar bears in their natural home, the Arctic, where they are battling a range of threats—from warming temperatures to overhunting.  Adding to these threats, the Obama Administration’s new plan to allow new offshore oil drilling in the Arctic could be catastrophic for polar bears and many other rare and sensitive ocean creatures.

The Administration has prepared a five-year plan for offshore oil and gas activities that would open the pristine Arctic and more of the Gulf of Mexico to offshore drilling, creating the serious risk of more devastating oil spills. This plan could be disastrous for polar bears, other wildlife, and the communities that depend on clean and healthy marine resources.  Under this plan, drilling would take place in the Arctic’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, which are home to many of the world’s polar bears, as well as in the embattled Gulf of Mexico, a region still struggling to recover from the BP Deepwater Horizon spill.

Currently, only 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears are left in the world. These massive creatures are strong swimmers, but they need hard sheets of sea ice so they can hunt seals, sleep, and find mates. With our climate warming at an alarming rate, scientists predict the Arctic could be ice-free during the summer by the middle of this century.

That means that in the next few decades, polar bears might not be able to hunt or mate—or survive. In fact, I recently wrote about a terrible story in which a polar bear mother was forced to swim for nine days straight to find sea ice on which to hunt. Her cub drowned while trying to keep up with her.

This fragile species – and so many others—can’t afford any more threats to their survival. Meanwhile, plans for risky offshore oil drilling in the Arctic move closer to becoming reality.

The icy waters, hurricane-strength storms, and blinding fog in the Arctic would make it exceptionally difficult – if not impossible -- to contain and clean up a major oil spill. The nearest Coast Guard facilities are 1,000 miles away, impeding a successful quick response.  Even if ships were able to make their way through the ice-covered seas, it has never been demonstrated that oil can be cleaned up in broken ice and one study that showed that there is often wave action that would prevent cleanup activities from working.  Polar bears, bowhead whales, walruses, seals, and other treasured species would be the victims of such a spill.

To make matters worse, oil companies are still using the same kind of blowout preventer that failed during the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. In the two years since the Gulf oil spill, Congress has failed to pass a single law to better protect the environment or oil rig workers.  We also need substantial additional science and proven response techniques before proceeding with any drilling in the Arctic. 

Rather than investing in backwards 19th-century fuels that put our workers, communities, and wildlife at risk, we must focus on clean energy that will create jobs and repower America.  Offshore drilling is a dangerous gamble that won’t reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and will only increase the effects of climate change we’re already seeing from pole to pole.

Our leaders must ramp up investment in clean, safe energy sources—including energy efficiency and offshore sources like wind power—that will create new jobs here at home, while protecting our precious ecosystems. That’s a future we can all support.

Credit: The Toronto Zoo

Take action today to tell the Administration to protect polar bears and other vulnerable wildlife from dangerous offshore drilling.

With the Administration taking public comments on its drilling plan through this Thursday, February 9th, we (and polar bears!) need your voice. Tell the Obama Administration that you want clean, safe energy, not a leg up for oil companies that sacrifice our wildlife and ecosystems in the name of billion-dollar profits.