With one of the more memorable opening lines in the annals of legal scholarship, J.B. Ruhl has skillfully set forth the promise and perils of addressing global warming's impact on imperiled species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). But while the pika may indeed be toast, other species affected by climate change have a better chance of survival and, as Ruhl notes, the ESA can play a critical role in ensuring it.

A recent study has found that the effects of climate change already underway will be with us for a millennium or longer. With this grim forecast, the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, known as mitigation, is even more acute, in order to stave off even worse irreversible impacts of climate change. At the same time, the need to focus additional attention on adaptation--taking measures to assist wildlife survival in the face of climate change--is also greater, since the effects of climate change will be with us much longer than previously thought.

The ESA can be usefully employed to address both mitigation and adaptation. Starting with the determination whether to list a species as threatened or endangered, the ESA can generate and focus attention on the impacts of climate change on wildlife. While the pika may not garner much public attention, the prospect of polar bears becoming extinct due to melting of their sea ice habitat has brought widespread attention to the impacts of climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. As the list of species threatened by climate change inevitably grows, the imperative to address the causes of climate change, as well as to implement measures to help threatened wildlife survive, will grow concomitantly.