Taken from dailycasserole.com
I just finished watching an Animal Planet feature, following the lives of 2 Polar Bears (a brother and a sister) in the heart of the Arctic region. The clip in the end really just enraged me and pushed me to write this article.
I can't find a clip of that documentary and even the photo above isn't the bear on the feature, but, the ending, which was really depressing, shows a very thin Polar Bear (can you even imagine seeing a thin Polar Bear?!), with her big bones depressingly clearly showing their raw shape against her skin. The ice around her has melted, and the food was scarce. Yes, sure it was the low season and Polar Bears are expected to have a difficult time hunting for food when the film was made but still, it was very alarming to see how some of them struggle to get by until the season of plenty. That Polar Bear on the documentary was a female and she needed to fatten herself up to increase the success rate of bearing cubs, and with how she looked, it seemed that she wouldn't even last a month.
Now for people who would argue that Polar Bears have been growing steadily in numbers for the past 70 years due to conservation efforts and try to change the focus from saving endangered species to saying that all these stories about global warming and Polar Bears aren't as scary as the documentaries set them up to be, well, you may be right about some things. These stories do get quite a number of viewers and any self respecting income generating broadcasting company want exactly that - lots of viewers and lots of money. But it doesn't change the fact that the only reason why Polar Bear population has improved is because of human intervention - aggressive conservation efforts. And the reason why they have been placed in the endangered species list is also greatly attributed to hunting and global warming.
And interestingly enough, there are people who argue that global warming has NOT BEEN PROVEN? Hmmm... I don't exactly know how to answer that technically but here are my personal observations.... Typhoons here in the Philippines have significantly grown in strength over the past 5 years. There have been more signal storms marked 4 in the last 5 years than there are in the decade before. Philippines has never had instances of hail but there have already been 2 in the past couple of years so far - Camaligan, Camarines Sur for example. There are parts of Luzon that have never been flooded before, and now, there's not a lot of cities that are flood free anymore. Our rainy season has become hot and almost an extension of Summer... Seasons have been really hard to predict. Dams are running out of water, and even with the ridiculously strong typhoons we have, they weren't enough to fill the the dams or they really didn't pass above the dams to fill them up. Whether these are results of global warming is probably something debatable, but CO2 emissions have been proven to increase every year and pollution is a fact that needs no research as proof - just look where ever you go, there's all sorts of pollution.
Just that there are some people denying that there's global warming and that we are the primary contributors to this phenomenon is really upsetting. We see one picture, one film, one clip and a lot of people rationalize it, or criticize it and refuse to see what is being shown. The photo above, shows a Polar Bear on a small chunk of ice and he would probably have to swim to get to the next chunk and to the next... until he gets to a solid mass. Whether it's global warming or not, can't we just be on the safe and proactive side and do our own part by minding our garbage, where we throw our cigarette butts, selling recyclable stuff to the junk shops, making sure to follow the labels in the trashcan, have your car checked when it's puffing black smoke, etc? I love nature, I love all things that are living and refuse to be a part of the system that kills. I am a nature lover and I will continue to be an advocate of change in the hopes that one will follow my lead, and others will too.
A passionate reminder - From Anne in Red
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