The (deputy) director's cut

I got a new snowboard for Christmas this year. Well, actually, I went out and bought myself one around mid-December, came home and told my wife she could take me off her list because I already had my present. Went over like mustard on peanut butter. Especially since, as it turned out, she’d already gotten me a bike.

So at the end of the day, I got a snowboard and bike for Christmas. Which is great, except that the present I got for myself was based on the silly assumption that there’d be snow at least somewhere on the East Coast. Even though I work on the issue of global warming every day, there’s still a part of me that’s in denial about the whole thing. I guess I just don’t want to admit that snow is a phenomenon that, in many parts of the world, appears to be on its way out.

The bike, however, has been put to good use since I found it perched by the tree Christmas morning. This past weekend it was 75 and sunny in our nation’s capital, in the middle of January. So instead of snowboarding, I went biking on Saturday and Sunday. Even got a bit of a tan to boot. But I felt guilty the whole time. Like I was peddling over polar bear carcasses or something. We might get a kick out of warm sunny days in the "dead of winter". But our furry friend to the north is facing the very real possibility of extinction as a result of the current trend.

And at Coca-Cola, that would be bad for marketing.

Speaking of which (polar bears, that is, not Coke), there might be hope for them yet, thanks to a lawsuit Greenpeace filed with two other organizations under the Endangered Species Act. Like a belated Christmas present to one of the season’s icons, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed on December 27^th to designate polar bears as threatened, due to the fact that the Arctic sea ice they rely on as a hunting platform is melting at an unprecedented rate. Unless the Bush Administration has the gall to assert that the Arctic meltdown is not a result of climate change (okay, so he asserted the Iraq War was justified based on weapons of mass destruction), an ESA listing of the polar bear would force the U.S. government to address the link between manmade emissions of heat-trapping gases and the increase in Arctic temperatures.

Bottom line: warm winter days in traditionally cold climates are not as desirable as they might appear. Whereas it’s not entirely accurate to say "this 75 degree day in January has been brought to you by climate change", it is true that what we’re experiencing is part of the pattern we’ll continue to see as the world heats up. Weather like we had this past weekend is the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. Might seem nice on the surface, but what’s behind it should scare you.

Especially if you own a ski slope. Or think in your next life that you might come back as a polar bear.