Dead Polar Bears Floating in the Ocean

Of all the stories I've read about the effects of global warming, Jane Kay's article for the San Francisco Chronicle on polar bears near Barter Island in the Beaufort Sea is the most moving and devastating (see "Polar Warning a World Warming: The Difference a Degree Makes"). I was literally brought to tears as I read this piece. I hope you will be too.

There are 22,000 of these amazing, noble beasts worldwide and 1900 reside in the southern Beaufort Sea. They live almost their entire lives on the ice. But that ice is breaking up more and more during the summer due to "Arctic melt," and forming later and later in the season. Polar bears live 95% of their lives on floating ice bergs. But with the ice breaking up, bears are forced sometimes to swim to the mainland where they effectively fast or wait for handouts of whale blubber until the ice builds up again.

At one point in her article, Ms. Kay writes: "In aerial surveys to count bowhead whales, the federal Minerals Management Service reported seeing four drowned polar bears floating in open water in 2004, apparently fatigued while trying to swim in high winds. They were seen in areas where the ice was between 125 miles and 185 miles from land. Many more bears may have drowned than they happened to spot."

Ms. Kay's article and all of the supplemental material at the San Francisco Chronicle's web page are well worth the time. The amazing photographs by Kat Wade are astounding as well. And Ms. Kay's online commentary can be listened to with QuickTime. Life is so heart-breakingly beautiful...

Comments

Why Green Jobs Don't Count

In ten years, if we're still talking about green jobs, we will have failed to transform the world economy to a more sustainable and egalitarian set of markets. For many of us who have been invested in the so-called "green revolution" for the past three decades, the fact that we're talking about jobs with special hues even today is disconcerting. As has been documented here at Blue Olives , efforts to modernize technology and establish a more democratic and benign form of productive capitalism have been in the pipeline since at least the early 1960s. Indeed, "green jobs" should not be something special; they should simply be "good jobs" that are part

The State of the War on Climate Change: Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way

Bill McKibben (Source: 350.org) Talking Writing magazine just posted an interview I did with climate activist and environmental journalist Bill McKibben called "We Don't Require Leaders." I urge you to go check it out. McKibben surprised me with some of his answers. The whole climate equation and how it impacts culture and politics is not simple or predictable. I did a lot of research for my interview. You can never get in all your questions. Nor can you make all the points you want to make in your interview introduction. I want to add a bit here, then, if that's okay. It's my contribution this week to what will likely otherwise be a finger snapping coverage of Earth Day by mainstream media. First off, while it's been underway for about two years, the climate change Divestment Movement at college and university campuses is really heating up, if you'll pardon the pun. Bill was getting prepared for Harvard Heat Week when we were correspondin...

Looking for a Way Forward: The Obama Administration Stumbles Some on Climate Change

What kind of world do you want? This blog went dark more than three years ago when I finally understood that: 1) the Obama administration and Congress were absolutely not going to deal with climate change; 2) the American people were absolutely not going to deal with climate change either. #2 was the straw that broke my 53-year-old back. It was bad enough watching the Kennedy's and their ilk fighting to stop an offshore wind project that would supposedly ruin their sweet view of Nantucket Sound, but watching environmental groups get all tangled up in their knickers over natural gas fracking was just pathetic. I couldn't take it anymore. In my past life I was an environmental advocate and a technology planner -- working with dozens of governmental agencies and corporations for more than 30 years. I analyzed the economics of energy systems and the cultural

Blue Olives

Search This Blog