Happy Feet: The Petition

On Tuesday a non-profit conservation organization, the Center for Biological Diversity, petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to add 12 species of penguins worldwide to the list of threatened and endangered species.  Reasons cited included global warming. 

"Abnormally warm ocean temperatures along with diminished sea ice have wrecked havoc on penguin food availability in recent decades," according to a news release from the organization. "Less food has led to population declines in penguin species ranging from the Southern Rockhopper and Humboldt penguins of the islands off South America, and the African Penguin in southern Africa, to the Emperor Penguin in Antarctica.  The ocean conditions causing these declines have been linked by scientists to global warming and are projected to intensify in the coming decades."

Among the Center's supporters quoted in the press release: John Collee, co-writer of “Happy Feet,” the animated movie about a dancing penguin which the top box-office draw in the United States over Thanksgiving weekend.

“The planet is largely covered with water yet we have this bizarre delusion that we can utterly destroy our marine ecosystems and somehow emerge unscathed," Collee said in the Center's news release. "The horrible reality of our war on the environment is so dark that most people don't want to contemplate it.”

--Craig Pittman