Columnists
Ecological Agnostics and The Great Arctic Melt
By D.L. McCracken
Oct 5, 2005, 15:53

Environmental experts and scientists specialising in global warming have been warning the world for decades that planet earth is careening toward environmental disaster at an ever-increasing rate but until recently, the warnings have been dismissed as hysterical rhetoric from a group of excitable geeks and nerds. While more enlightened nations on the European continent heeded the warnings to a certain extent, other nations around the globe especially highly industrialised countries such as the United States have completely ignored the scientific experts maintaining that the idea of a melting Arctic was unfounded and simply could not be proven. Let's call the naysayers 'Ecological Agnostics'(EA).

So over the last several decades environmentalists continue to watch in despair and mounting horror as the very geography of the high north melts, shifts and recedes. Environmental experts however will not be deterred in their determination to force the rest of the world to listen and they persist in their efforts to convert the EA's to that of believer status. Perhaps a sign of encouragement is slowly emerging from a very influential segment of our society - the mainstream world press.

Of late, several top-rated news organisations are designating environmental issues as their top lead-in stories. Of course one has to remember that mainstream news have ulterior motives and certain criteria for even considering news that has the potential of affecting the entire world. The most important criteria is that the news must hint strongly of impending catastrophic disaster. The worse the news the better the audience.

At the very least, environmental issues especially that of the developing disaster in the Arctic is for the time being forefront in many people's minds. Now is the time for ecology-conscious writers to bombard the press with the facts and the consequences of the Great Arctic Melt, going on the premise that a constant barrage of specific news will eventually incite others to take up the cause.

This writer maintains a special interest in the protection and preservation of wildlife throughout the world which includes the Arctic and the high northern regions, an area that possesses a fascinating peculiarity in that every living being residing in the northern regions rely and welcome cold and ice. Sub-zero temperatures are worshipped in the north in the same way that warmth is worshipped in the tropics. If the tropical areas of this earth suddenly experienced a sharp drop in temperature close to the freezing point and continued on this cold trend over several decades, indigenous species of flora and fauna would either disappear or migrate to more southerly regions in their heat-seeking quest for survival. Humans would be forced to follow because their very survival is dependent on a hot environment.

The same holds true for the Arctic but in the reverse. Cold and sub-zero temperatures are absolutely essential in order to maintain the delicate balance required to simply exist. The people of the north depend on the cold and the ice for their survival just as the people of the tropics depend on warmth for theirs.

Which brings us to the polar bears. Considered to be the largest land predator in the world, polar bears live, breed, hunt and play exclusively in the Arctic. These magnificant creatures can be found in only five country's northern regions - Canada, the U.S., Norway, Russia and Denmark. Polar bear's main food source is the seal. An adult polar bear has only one natural enemy - humans. On the other hand, starvation is the leading cause of death in younger bears.

Polar bears are adapted to the extreme cold of the Arctic where winter temperatures on average dip to -55-65C. Indeed the word "Arctic" derives from the Greek "Arktikos" which means 'country of the great bear'. Sadly, this country of the great bear is melting and the great bear itself is in impending peril.

Our climate is changing at a quicker rate than in the last 10,000 years as a direct result of human activity and one only needs to look north to witness the evidence of a changing climate. The once permanent Arctic ice is thinning and receding. Arctic summers are becoming longer and warmer. The distance between ice floes has forced the polar bear to attempt swims of much greater distances than they are capable of completing. Local people are reporting increasing numbers of dead polar bears floating in open waters once frozen solid. The bears are drowning as they try to maintain their current hunting patterns. Other bears who are forced out of sheer hunger into human settlements in search of food, only to be shot.

The Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG), a group of research scientists representing Canada, the U.S., Norway, Russia and Denmark has recently upgraded the polar bear species to vulverable status based on scientific research data and specific projections which indicate a general decline in bear population of more than 30% within the next three decades.

Just when one would imagine that polar bears are indeed facing incredible obstacles to their very existence yet another threat to their population has been observed - the grizzly bear is moving north and settling into areas previously unheard of for this species of bear all as a result of sub-Arctic regional thaws.

Can the polar bear be saved from extinction or is it already too late for this creature of the ice? There's no simple answer but environmentalists and conservationists are unanimous in their assertion that in order to preserve the 20 - 24,000 polar bears that remain, specific international collaboration is necessary. In particular, the governments of Japan, Australia and the United States have been slow to admit the urgency of climate change as well as the consequences of such a change on indigenous species.

Will the polar bears have to be sacrificed and presented as the climate change proof that these countries appear to require? Probably. All one has to do is read the headlines to realize where priorities lie especially in the U.S. - Bush Calls For New Oil Refineries. "It ought to be clear to everybody that this country needs to build more refining capacity to be able to deal with the issues of tight supply," Bush said after expressing amazement that it's been 30 years since a new refinery was built in the United States.

Doesn't bode well for the polar bears, does it..



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