Unbearably Bleak

Nature probably doesn’t care. Lots of people who believe that God will come down and fix everything and make it okay. Most folks don’t give it a second thought. After all, how exactly would your life be different if there were no more polar bears? Wouldn’t change much, but somehow, I’d like to believe that when we lose a precious species, somehow all of humanity suffers. It is a deep loss, a symbol of the jeopardy we have placed around ourselves with our failure to contain our impact on the environment; we may be choking ourselves slowly to death.

But for the polar bear, life is hard, painfully hard. Today. Now. Climate change. Greenhouse effect. These are words, but most of us don’t see the daily changes; we don’t yet face survival issues… yet. As the bears’ ice flows slowly disappear, as their bases for hunting and feeding fade into ancient atavistic memories of species unable to understand the changes, these luxurious animals are facing the multiple prongs of lost environment and being physically ill-suited to the warmer habitats, they face inevitable extinction. On November 22^nd, the National Science Foundation released a study with some facts that are, to put it mildly, hard to swallow, especially if you are a polar bear.

Among many variables, the report looked at the difference between polar and grizzly bears, their bone structures and their adaptability to different environments. Not surprisingly, polar bears have the cards stacked against their survival. The November 24^th Los Angeles Times, commenting on that study, described the “3-D computer modeling that compared the skull and jaw strength of the two bruins and found polar bears ill-suited to the tougher chewing demands posed by the largely vegetarian diet of their grizzly cousins…

“Polar bears already are losing habitat as rising Arctic temperatures diminish the sea ice they depend on to hunt for seals. As the ice continues to shrink, polar bears will be forced to seek additional food sources… ‘To people who say polar bears can just change their diet, we are saying … they will have to, but it probably will not be sufficient for them, especially if they are co-existing with grizzly bears,’ said Blair Van Valkenburgh, senior author of the report.” But can they change their diets; will evolution give them the ability to change their diets in time to allow the species to survive? Probably not, say the experts.

And then there will be the head-to-head confrontations, turf wars for dwindling terrain, between the grizzlies and their brilliantly white cousins? “Grizzlies, a subspecies of brown bears, have begun moving northward in Canada as their natural habitat grows milder, while polar bears are being pushed farther south by melting ice, putting the two species together in territory best suited to the grizzly… ‘These two species are already starting to come into contact,’ [Graham Slater, lead author of the report,] said. And in the escalating competition for the plant life that makes up the bulk of the grizzly's diet, the polar bear is expected to lose… The problem for polar bears is that they lack the ideal skull strength and tooth size needed for munching plants, grass, tree bark and berries, the scientists said .” The LA Times.

This is one story of one species. Multiply this tale across the thousands of species that will be forced to change. How will new tropical diseases, migrating toxic insects and bacteria also seeking more suitable climates, impact our own sustainability. When will the story of the destruction of species add human beings to the list?

I’m Peter Dekom, and these are the stories of the “future of us.”