You know what REALLY grinds my gears?

The other day, as I lay in bed recovering from an evening of over-sudsing, I flipped the channels with eyes half open looking for something, anything to distract me from my pulsing headache. I don't know what channel I stopped on, but what I watched completely held the thought of my aching head at bay, at least for a few minutes.

It was a commercial for the World Wildlife Fund starring Sharon Lawrence, best known for her time on NYPD Blue. According to Wikipedia, she also does charity work for the Alzheimer's Association and Project ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), but in this brief appearance her main concern was neither of these horrible, deadly human diseases. She was pleading with the viewers to open up their hearts, and wallets, to help save the polar bear. It seems that Climate Change (formerly known as Global Warming, or in the 70's Global Cooling) has been reducing sea ice in the Arctic Ocean at such an alarming rate that it's destroying the habitat of the polar bear. According to her the polar bear could be extinct "before the end of our children's lifetime". It really made me stop and think.

I thought: OK, and?

Look, I am not actively seeking to eradicate polar bears, but here is a list of things that are most likely to happen when humans and polar bears come into contact:

a) the human(s) will die

b) the bear(s) will die

c) both a) and b)

If, God willing, the polar bear becomes extinct, I can't think of a single way that any human life will be negatively affected. Forgive me if I care slightly more about genocide in Darfur, or whether Strahan will sign with the Giants, or if I run out of toilet paper.

Moral of the story: polar bears may look cute and cuddly, but they are not going to give you a Coca Cola at Christmas. They are going to rip you limb from limb and dine on your bowels and won't regret it one bit.

Save the tears, Sarah Lawrence, not the polar bears.