More Stress for Polar Bears

In the context of a warming climate, the impacts of oil and gas development in the Arctic Ocean could be devastating. Polar bears, for example, are already experiencing so much stress from shrinking ice sheets that the Bush administration has taken the rare step of listing polar bears as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.

Drilling, seismic exploration, and transportation are likely to stress polar bears even further by disturbing feeding habits, causing female bears to abandon maternity dens, and disrupting the animals' lifecycles in a number of ways.

 Learn more about the effects of global warming on polar bears

Human Rights Violations

Global warming is causing human rights violations in the Arctic. As the thermometer soars twice as fast in the Arctic as elsewhere in the world -- and as polar ice melts -- coastlines erode, houses crumble, food becomes scarce, and people die. Global warming thus threatens the internationally recognized rights to life, personal security, health, housing, culture, food, and work.

 Learn more about global warming and human rights

 Protecting Polar Bears in the Face of New Proposed Oil Exploration

Earthjustice filed a potentially precedent-setting lawsuit that aims to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to take global climate change into account when deciding whether to authorize oil and gas activities that have adverse impacts on threatened polar bears and walruses.

 Protecting the Inuit Way of Life

In collaboration with the indigenous Inuit people and the Center for International Environmental Law, Earthjustice is working with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to establish global warming as a human rights violation

 Reducing Black Carbon

Recent evidence provides hope that fast action to reduce soot emissions can slow global and Arctic warming quickly enough to avoid catastrophic tipping points such as the melting of sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet. Earthjustice is working nationally and internationally for stricter standards and promote the transfer of clean technologies to reduce these "black carbon" emissions.

 08/15/07
Shell Oil Can't Drill This Year in Beaufort Sea, Court Rules
Ninth Circuit Court halts exploration amid concerns over environmental harms

 03/01/07
Nobel Prize Nominee Testifies About Global Warming
"Protect the Arctic and we save the planet. Use us in the Arctic as your early warning system." - Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Chair, Inuit Circumpolar Conference