Green Daily

Just kidding - there's not really a medal (or a t-shirt, or even a lousy certificate) for the types of animals most in danger of extinction. But the legal "endangered species" designation, which the threatened bears are up for, would be valuable for other reasons. This according to an article on Slate.com posted yesterday.

(In case you didn't see "An Inconvenient Truth", the bears are threatened by global warming, which depletes Arctic sea ice, which is where the bears like to hunt and have their babies. Hey, it's chilly, but they put in a bunch of years evolving and like it quite fine, thank you.)

This article argues that even though the bears are more numerous than most species which usually make the list, and there's no way to know whether listing them would help them at all, an "endangered species" demarcation could help enviros looking for fodder for future lawsuits against climate change offenders. And hey, soon all of the kids who are now growing up watching "The Golden Compass" and Suri Cruise's Knut movie will be old enough to save the bears themselves - if there are still any left in the wild.