The other day, a report appeared on the net about a polar bear that was found dead in northern Norway. The bear was little more than skin and bones. It had starved to death.
Polar Bears are apex predators. They're very good at finding food in the short season of sunlight in the far north. They are biologically fine tuned to hunt and catch seals and other prey while roaming the permanent pack ice. In the few months of summer, they have to eat a lot. They have to put on a lot of fat to tide them over during the long dark winters in hibernation. The problem is the pack ice on which they depend for access to their natural food supply is going away. It used to be that these bears could walk on to the ice from the landed areas of the arctic during the entire summer season. That is no longer true. In many places, the ice recedes hundreds of miles, leaving bears in those areas no way to access the ice. There have even been cases where polar bears have drown while trying to swim to the ice they are adapted to and which has always been there in the past. It's no wonder that these predators have become an endangered species.
Undeniably, the loss of the summer sea ice is caused by anthropocentric warming... climate change caused by human dependence on fossil fuels.
The demise of the polar bear is but one tragic example of human hubris. Our indifference to nature's rhythms is directly causing the decline of plant and animal species in every corner of our planet. It is deeply distressing to see life on Earth being destroyed purely because we humans are unwilling to practice good planetary stewardship. We can and should be better than that...
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