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EN ROUTE TO COPENHAGEN
Posted by Kassie Siegel
Sunday, December 6, 2009, 2:01 p.m.


En route to Copenhagen, I’m thinking about the bears. Last month I went to Churchill, Polar bearManitoba, Canada for the second time, to take part in Polar Bear International’s Celebration of Conservation, which brought many leading polar bear scientists to Churchill for lectures, meetings, and educational webcasting through Tundra Connections. 

Polar bear tourism is based from large vehicles called “tundra buggies,” and one such buggy has been converted, through the efforts of Polar Bears International and many generous donors, into a teched-out research and education machine. “Buggy One” has high-speed Internet, a camera and computer systems to film both the bears outside and the people inside, an outdoor viewing platform, bunks that hold gear during the day and sleeping people at night, and a rudimentary toilet. Each day a panel of scientists, teachers, and others present multiple programs on polar bears, climate science, and taking action on the climate crisis. A multi-talented driver, photographer, videographer, and webcast mixmaster named B.J. Kirschoffer broadcasts alternating images of the bears and Hudson Bay outside, the four of us talking at the table inside, and graphs, charts, videos, and other PowerPoint magic. At night, Buggy One docks at the Tundra Buggy Lodge, the presentation table becomes the dinner table, and we sleep in bunks in several buggies, with sleeping bags and a small space heater.

Polar bearsBeing out with the bears from sunrise to sunset is an indescribable experience.  The intelligence, charisma, and sheer magnetic pull of these animals is overpowering. Some days it seems there’s nonstop drama out on the tundra. During one memorable Webcast, a mother bear and her cub were trying to move quickly across some unconsolidated ice blocks to get to shore and away from a large male bear. (The bay wasn’t frozen yet, but prevailing winds and currents tend to pile any ice that is in the bay up against this shore.) The mother and cub fell through the ice repeatedly, while kids from seven different schools looked on. Submersion in icy water is dangerous for very young cubs because they haven’t yet built up their insulating body fat and can die of hyperthermia.  At one point, the cub went under for what seemed like a very long time — so long that I began to worry that it wouldn’t surface.  This day, the story ended happily — the cub was old enough to withstand the cold water, and mother and cub reached the shore and avoided the threatening male. The incident was an incredible demonstration of why polar bears tend to abandon ice for land when the ice concentration falls below 50 percent — it simply takes too much energy to move across this treacherous surface.  Watch Daniel Zatz’s footage from a similar incident later in the month here.

The hard truth is that the situation for the polar bears of Western Hudson Bay is critical.  As rising temperatures shorten the sea-ice Polar bearseason, the bears are losing weight and reproducing less successfully and the population is declining. Individual bears are drowning and starving and resorting to cannibalism due to food stress. This year alone, eight incidents in which male polar bears killed cubs for food were observed in western Hudson Bay.  It’s unprecedented and quite horrifying. One such incident was witnessed by a buggy full of tourists. 

The Arctic is the Earth’s early warning system, and the polar bear the canary in the coal mine. But unless we get very serious about reducing emissions very soon, polar bears don’t stand a chance.

This is just one of many harsh realities that have been piling up lately.  As global warming impacts around the world exceed even worst-case scenarios in timing and magnitude and scientists’ warnings become ever more dire, the mismatch between the science and our administration’s policy response becomes ever more stark. Those of us calling for real change are constantly reminded of the “political reality” in this country.  Yet we’re hard up against a physical reality, which is far more immutable than public opinion and politics. 

And of course it’s not just polar bears at risk. One recent report concluded succinctly:

“Accepting any stabilization target above 350 ppm CO2 really means that society has made a decision to make do without coral reefs.  It is therefore also a decision to accept the serious consequences of coral reef loss on biodiversity, on sea fisheries around the world, and on the half billion people who depend directly on coral reefs for their livelihoods. Removing CO2 has thus become an imperative for survival.”

So as we make our long journey to Copenhagen for the annual “conference of the parties” of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, my thoughts drift back, as they often do, to the bears. If we can act soon enough to save them, we’ll be avoiding the worst impacts of climate change for ourselves as well. Whether that will happen is an open question. The events of the next two weeks may very well sway us one direction or another.

Next entry COP 15: Day Two

 

Polar bear photos © Brendan Cummings