The popular culture is drowning in sentimentality and simplification. As an adherent of rational and nuanced thinking, this disturbs me. And it should disturb you, too.
From the gross simplifications surrounding the alleged bullying epidemic to the brainless pap we are constantly fed about climate change, the public understanding about key issues is woefully poor.
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| Coke's nauseating campaign. (photo from wwf site) |
This is why I was heartened, when reading the offerings of two leading Canadian newspapers this morning, to see some clear thinking on the two issues I mentioned above. The
National Post's interview with author Emily Bazelon about bullying (not on-line yet, but to be found on A3 of the print edition) is a must read in advance of Pink Shirt Day on Feb. 27. (And, you're correct: I won't be wearing a pink shirt on Wednesday.)
And
Margaret Wente's column in the
Globe and Mail, about the surprising health of the polar bear population, provides a powerful antidote to the nauseating
Coca Cola-WWF save-the-polar-bears commercial pap that's routinely consumed by an easily duped public.
On this latter subject, I wrote an article for the
Western Standard six years ago that comes to the same conclusions Ms. Wente has now come to.
Here's the link to the story.
Ultimately, the truth will out.
Here's the full text to my polar-bear story:
The bear facts
Canada’s Inuit
say the polar bear isn’t threatened by global warming or hunting
Patterk Netser killed his
first polar bear when he was 14, bagged about 30 more over the three decades since,
and plans to keep shooting even more until he’s no longer able to hunt – come
global-warming hell or Arctic Ocean high water.
The hunt makes an Inuit male whole, Netser explains, and it’s just too bad for
southern politicians and environmental activists who worry that the polar bear
is threatened with extinction. “We are going to continue our hunting, yes,”
affirms the soft-spoken Inuit, who lives in Coral Harbour, Nunavut
with his wife and six children.
Netser’s opinions on this
increasingly controversial subject are important because he just happens to be Nunavut’s environment
minister. Moreover, his opinion is especially noteworthy because it not only
rebuts southerners’ assumptions about the fate of the polar bear, but also
directly challenges some key myths that fuel current global-warming concern.
That the campaign against
global warming is an emotional one should go without saying. Most environmental
campaigns are. Witness the fact that environmental groups have long focused on
big-eyed mammals to pluck the right emotional strings in the hearts of
prospective donors. That’s why campaigns against the Newfoundland seal hunt seem never to end,
while campaigns to save endangered snakes or insects are non-existent.
And so it is that
environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund have begun using images of
the polar bear to draw the world’s attention to the global warming issue. Their
argument goes something like this: 1. Humans should cut back on their emissions
of greenhouse gases because, 2. Those gases are warming the atmosphere at an
alarming rate, which means that, 3. Temperatures in the Arctic are rising,
which causes, 4. Sea ice to form less frequently, which in turn means that, 5.
Polar bears are losing the icy platforms from which they can hunt for seals,
which means, 6. The bears might die off because of global warming, which leads directly
to the grand finale, which is a plea to, 7. Give us money so we can fight
global warming and save the polar bear.
Peter Ewins, the WWF’s
Toronto-based director of species conservation, believes polar bear are,
indeed, threatened, and makes no apologies for the fund’s new anti-global-warming
campaign, in which polar bears are given a starring role. “You can call it an
icon, a flagship or a canary in a coal mine,” Ewins says. “This is an indicator
of some impact of something that humanity is doing, something that is going on,
and it’s expressed in a simple way by the polar bear.”
However, all that’s known for
sure about the world’s polar bear population is that it is in flux. It is
stable in many areas, decreasing in a few and increasing in a few others,
according to a new status table compiled by the Polar Bear Specialist Group of
the World Conservation Union. Lily Peacock, the government of Nunavut’s polar bear biologist, reveals there
are large gaps in the research, and that experts can’t truthfully say whether
the overall population is rising or falling. “That’s why, when we talk about
the entire world’s population, we say between 20,000 and 25,000,” Peacock says.
But if this figure is accurate, then polar bear numbers have actually more than
doubled in the past half century. More than half the world’s polar bears can be
found in Canada,
and about 90 percent of these make their homes in Nunavut.
Concern over the polar bear is
directly linked to a single study of one isolated population in western Hudson’s Bay, which found
a 25-per-cent decrease in the group’s population. Now, environmentalists are
pressing for the U.S.
government to list the polar bear as threatened under the U.S. Endangered
Species Act. There’s also a push to have the bear listed as a species of
“special concern” under the Canada Species at Risk Act. Either designation
could lead to the curtailing or elimination of the lucrative sport-hunting
industry in Nunavut,
which McGill anthropologist George Wenzel says pumps $20,000 into the local
economy for each of the 70 or 80 bears killed by well-heeled southern hunters
every year. “So it’s a significant amount of money,” he says, “especially in a
place where money does not grow.”
Sport hunting accounts for
only about 17 percent of the annual polar-bear harvest. The rest are taken by
Inuit hunters for food and the sale of furs, which can fetch about $150 per
foot, says Wenzel. This hunt is threatened too, but Netser says his people will
never give it up because of its profound cultural value to the Inuit. “It gives
you a sense of pride on being able to hunt, and I can’t really put it in words,
but it is so very important to our culture and society,” he says.
Netser explains that the Inuit
have always used their intimate knowledge of their harsh land to manage the
polar bear hunt wisely, and they will continue to do so, regardless of outside
influence. Their on-the-ground observations tell them that polar bear continue
to be plentiful, he says. He acknowledges that the North does seem to be
warming: freeze-up comes later and the spring melt comes earlier. But he says
the Inuit have always been an adaptable people, and they’ll adapt now. Likewise,
he believes the polar bear will adapt too. “In one of the zones, the population
is increasing and they seem to be benefiting from the climate change,” he
declares.
How so? “They spend more time
on land. And there are an abundance of birds nesting in cliffs and in rock. And
they hunt them during the summer.” As well, the bear sneak up on seals and
walrus that might be basking in the sun. “So they’ve adapted really well.”
After all, he agrees, adaptation is the natural way. Science tells us the polar
bear themselves used to be land-bound creatures, but adapted to northern climes
and to hunting from ice. And so Netser believes there’s no reason they simply can’t
adapt again.
But even the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has delivered highly-torqued reports (see, especially, the "Climategate" scandal) that fanned the alarmist flames in years gone by, has now, essentially, had to admit that it was wrong. Here's a link to the big story. And here's a link to an excellent story about how the IPCC's supporters tied themselves up in knots over the possibility that the new, inconvenient fact might have to be covered up to as not to give succor to climate-change skeptics.
