Yesterday’s news about the Interior Department’s finally listing polar bears as a threatened species seemed to cause hardly a ripple on the pond of public concern. And why should it at a time many are suffering from "concern fatigue"? Some are expending so much mental energy on the Democratic presidential primaries that they have heart for little else. Even wars, the economy, and a global food crisis have taken a temporary backseat to concern about the cataclysmic natural disasters in Myanmar and China.
It doesn’t take a political pundit to see that the military junta in Myanmar makes the Bush administration’s response to Katrina look not so bad, but the junta’s fatally botched response does bring back our own memories of needless suffering along our own Gulf coast. And, Myanmar calls attention to of John McCain’s now-resigned lobbyist advisors who was paid to make the junta look good.
Our hearts may not be in the story about the polar bears, but our heads better be because they are our planet’s "canaries in the mine." We dare not let our concern fatigue allow us bypass this story pass for at least two reasons.
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