Polar bears show the way
* Melt the icecaps
* Wipe out the bear’s necessities
* Save the Inuits
* Re-carpet your house (or igloo)
Four white blobs drift past, bobbing along on the ice-pocked surface of the Beaufort Sea. Each of the scientists does a double-take. In sixteen years of monitoring the Arctic’s inimical waters, they have observed the creatures swimming on three hundred and fifty separate occasions. But this time something is very different. Polar bears are adept, powerful swimmers but these don’t seem to be making much of an effort. Perhaps they are exhausted and taking a rest. After all, they have to swim further these days because the rapidly melting sea ice means that stretches of open water are continually widening. But on closer inspection, it turns out these aren’t just having a breather. No, in actual fact they have breathed their last.
The polar bear, the pesky poster child of the greenies, has blown the whistle on the once-secret melting of the Arctic, bullying the American government into accepting that climate change is for real after years of gutsy denial. And, as ever, there is no shortage of smug scientists queuing up with statistics to fuel the hysteria: a 40 per cent loss in sea-ice thickness in twenty years; Arctic glaciers shrinking by 17 per cent year on year; half the polar icecap having melted away over the last half-century; an area the size of Turkey recently cracking up and sliding into the sea.
More than any other creature on the planet, the polar bear has evolved into the iconic victim of climate change. The Arctic was designated as your private test-bed, an early-warning weather system where you could delight in observing tomorrow’s disastrous changes today; a place crucial for inducing dangerous rises in sea level and changes to oceanic currents. But its sanctity is threatened by these photogenic creatures, lolloping about in their yellowy-white coats. You are losing the public-relations war. It’s time to put a cap in the ass of this PR elixir for the environmental movement. It’s time to poleaxe the polar.
Your living room looks cosy enough, but it’s missing something. What it needs is a large furry white rug, a voluptuous carpet with a polar bear’s head still attached. Book a flight to Yellowknife, in the frozen north of Canada, and begin packing. Once there, a connecting flight will take you to the small settlement of Resolute, in the northern territory of Nunavut, a vast wild Arctic wasteland governed by the indigenous Inuit people. Conveniently enough, Inuits are allowed to kill polar bears for subsistence but, more importantly, they hold the right to sell their tags to trophy hunters. Once in Resolute, state your intentions and name your price. You will pay what it takes, though research indicates that £12,500 should suffice. Set off on a dog-sled with a high-powered telescopic rifle and an Inuit tracker to locate your prey. Resolve to save your bullets for the nine-foot males, who can impregnate several females within each breeding season and are vital for the species’ breeding momentum. They are twice the size of a female bear; only an idiot could miss.
Your Inuit guide will be unswervingly supportive of your increasing predilection for dead polar bears. He likes your money. While travelling through the snowy wastes, you could discuss your mutual loathing of environmentalists, pouring scorn on the recent comments from Mary Simon, president of Inuit Tapiriit of Canada, who accused greenies’ attempts to protect the polar bear of being driven solely by ‘political reasons against the Bush administration over greenhouse-gas emissions’. Her statement that, ‘as Inuit, we fundamentally disagree with such tactics’ is preposterous. You intend to prove her wrong.
The Nunavut government calculates bear-hunting quotas solely on reports from locals, who claim that more polar bears are hanging out near their villages these days. Scientists believe this is because melting ice is driving them inland. So you decide to start paying Inuits £500 for every report of increased ‘scary’ polar bear activity near their family homes. Sources of income in Nunavut Territory are as scarce as trees and there is no doubt that locals will be happy to exaggerate polar bear sightings for cash. You might even consider fabricating a sighting of a polar bear attempting to attack a small child. On the strength of such reported sightings, the Nunavut authorities recently increased hunting quotas for polar bears by as much as 28 per cent. Although a former Nunavut environment minister denied such a link, his successors will be happy for the extra moolah. The government receives £25 for a non-resident hunting licence and another £400 for each polar bear trophy, plus 6 per cent tax. It all adds up. Already, a sizeable bear-trophy market exists among affluent American alpha-males. Once the rest of the world gets wind and quotas are increased to meet demand, you feel confident the polar bear will get its comeuppance.
At the time of writing, there are around 25,000 polar bears left in the world. The Nunavut government currently sanctions a quota of six hundred to be shot a year, of which around eighty are sold to foreign trophy hunters who pay up to £18,000 for the privilege. Most are Americans keen to exploit a loophole in the US Marine Mammal Protection Act, allowing trophies to be brought home. Scientific consensus indicates that, between them, global warming and hunting could prompt a 30 per cent reduction in the polar bear population over the next few decades, a projection that suggests these particular poster boys are well aboard the extinction curve.
Global warming is melting the bears’ icy migration routes, a journey critical for breeding and for catching seals. Russian bear populations are threatened by poaching. Pollution is causing deformities and reproductive failures to bears in Norway. Tests have found that chemical compounds used in Europe and North America to reduce the flammability of household furnishings can reach the bears’ northern habitats and affect their thyroid and sexual glands. A high rate of hermaphroditism has been observed, making it possible that, when gunning down the odd male or two, you may also have killed a couple of females with the same bullet.
Apparently your Big Oil chums are actually banking on global warming. For them it can’t get hot enough quick enough. A quarter of the world’s remaining oil and gas is locked beneath the impenetrable frozen core of the Arctic, according to a US geological survey. Once, arguments over who owned this vast treasure trove of mineral wealth were academic. But climate change has made access and drilling possible. Ker-ching.
The new Klondike is already underway, the planet’s last great colonial land-grab. More oil naturally ensures more spills, thrills and all manner of mishaps. Provisional tests have seen support ships urgently summoned to tow melting icebergs from a collision course with exploratory oil rigs. And now you, too, can join in with the new oil rush. All you need is a mini-submarine, a British flag, and no qualms (as if!) about creating the next world war. Once kitted out, chug north beneath the Norwegian Sea until you reach the polar icecap where, adroitly guiding a robotic arm into the inky underworld, you plant a titanium Union Jack. You have claimed the Arctic as sovereign territory. That will cause rather a stir. When Russia did the same in the summer of 2007, it triggered an immediate international diplomatic incident. Kremlin cartographers had noticed a narrow isthmus of continental shelf which extended from Russia to the pole. They were having it. But Canada had noticed the same thing and within a day had ordered new icebreakers and stationed a thousand soldiers in the Arctic. Two military bases were announced for the region. Hours later, Danish scientists urgently set sail to lay claim to their share of the region’s wealth. Almost simultaneously, a US coastguard icebreaker headed off to map the seafloor north of Alaska. Ω
The first shots of the Arctic conflict had been fired. Relations between Norway and Russia remain tense. Canada, the US and Denmark could easily be sucked into any war over the Arctic, according to EU foreign-policy diplomats. In fact, European governments have been warned by Brussels to plan for a potentially lethal conflict between Russia and the West over the Arctic’s vast mineral resources.
Plan away, you say. When hostilities erupt, it’s curtains for the polar pin-up. Once the missiles start flying, who will care about a four-legged hermaphrodite who’s forgotten how to swim? In the meantime, fifteen oil companies have appealed to explore US-controlled areas of the Arctic. Shell has spent more than £20 million on leases to explore for fuel in the waters where tired polar bears are drowning. In Alaska, the US government wants to extract fifteen billion barrels of crude oil from the frozen Chukchi Sea, one of the bears’ last habitats, whose treacherous waters provided the iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912. Soon there will be no more icebergs, and there will be no more polar bears – but Godspeed an environmental catastrophe of titanic proportions.
* Full-scale war declared between EU and Kremlin after Russian warship turns away team of Norwegian scientists from polar circle. Possible.
* Investigation into uncorroborated reports of children mauled by polar bears. Inuit authorities say enough is enough and order bear cull. Months later, reports found to be false. Plausible.
* As Arctic oil wars escalate, a rig is sabotaged in the Beaufort Sea, causing an environmental catastrophe three times as bad as BP’s Prudhoe Bay spill in Alaska, which leached 250,000 gallons
of crude oil into a sensitive area. Predictable.
* US and Canadian governments come under fierce pressure to stop trophy hunting of polar bears after undercover investigation exposes the trade. Highly likely.
* Number of Inuits unable to feed themselves increases. A spokesman blames it on ‘blinkered’ environmentalists for valuing polar bears above human life. Probable.
Likelihood of polar bear population reaching unsustainable levels by 2020: 57%