Up the pole
The Bush administration has declared them an endangered species, or at least “threatened” which is step below. One must not be rash about important international decisions. Tread carefully and eventually do nothing. Especially when it concerns that bit of rock we all try to live on without too much care and attention. It is far too tiring to worry about what is going to happen to-morrow.
A little over a year ago three environmental groups including Greenpeace sued to force such a designation from the U.S. Fish and Wild life Service. This august body oversees endangered species. A lawyer involved in the hype pontificated that ”there was still time to save the polar bears if the greenhouse-gas pollution was curtailed immediately”.
Talking about farting in the wind…The amount of cattle gas emissions combined with the human body waste, especially after such periods as Xmas, Easter, family reunions, over-indulged holiday periods and so on is more likely to turn the stratosphere into a Swiss cheese with as many holes as necessary for a zillion of rodents to create their own planets.
I would like to know if “Hubble”, the much in the news spatial telescope, could send us back a picture of the thick layer of methane surrounding our planet and produced by animals (humans included in this term although I think that animals are far superior).
It might show that basically there are too many of us on that rock, wanting too much, eating too much, driving too many cars per family, expecting cheap flights and holidays at any time of the year. In fact sucking out the planet and its atmosphere resources without a thought for the future. This attitude is not new or confined to the unthinking class. A French president, in the 19th century, made this outstanding statement: ”Après moi, le deluge!” (After me, the flood). The name escaped me but the remark remains in my mind. It also seems to me that it is a thinking process that has being adopted ever since by various governments around the world.
Sounds bleak but as Dave, my ever so patient and faithful friend from the States pointed out to me a little while ago, planet earth is a living rock and therefore goes into cycles, changes, disturbances of climates, movements of earth and oceans, cataclysms and so on without anybody’s help. It does not happen overnight. We, humans, have a very false idea of time. Time is what you make of it. T.S. Eliot said it beautifully in “The Four Quarters”: The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew tree are of equal duration.
“This is a victory for the polar bear and all wild life threatened by global warming,” says a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity. Oh! Yeah?? It has been scientifically proved that 96.8% of the species that populated our planet millions of years ago have disappeared in the natural process of elimination dictated by the cycles of nature. You cannot blame the dinosaur’s extinction to an excess of methane puffed out of too many cattle’s exhaust pipes or too many planes getting their cargo of beer bellies to the sun. The dinosaurs just did not adapt or decided to commit mass suicide like the lemmings. Those small rodents inhabit the steppes of Irtych d´Ienissei on the vast plateau Vitim in
In May they all come out of their subterranean habitats and gather by the millions. A selection is made. On one side those who will stay and ensure the continuation of the species and on the other those who will undertake a 3000 kms trip. Those travellers have been noticed by their happy behaviour, their friskiness towards the females who will give birth to numerous litters on the way. Litters to be abandoned to die. After 4 months of relentless walk they swim cross the wide Ienissei river. Not a mean task for small fat rodents used to underground burrows. But the goal is in sight and nothing will stop them. Eventually they arrive on the East side of the
Wise lot.
In the same icy waters the polar bears have designed a new strategy to survive. According to Mitch Taylor, a polar bear biologist in , the polar bears are doing fine contrary to the greens hype. He states that those white “cuddly” animals evolved from grizzlies 250.000 years ago to adapt to new climatic conditions. Their numbers have increased from 8000 before the big hype about green issues fifty years ago, to 25.000 at the present. The fact that they are losing weight is due to increasing numbers competing for the same food supply.
But the melting of the ice creates a better environment for seals, the main polar bear diet. On land blueberries abound and the bears adore them. They are seen to waddle around with a belly full of them.
“It is silly to predict the demise of polar bears based only on media hysteria” concludes
Adaptation is the key to survival it seems. What I cannot figure is what is happening to those women who thrive to achieve size 00. To vanish slowly from your partner/friends/work mates view must be like digging a hole in the ground and slowly sink into oblivion or rather to the bottom of a
Another media hysteria and irresponsible behaviour on the part of those brainless so-called celebrities who should understand that their money and endless boring photographs in the popular press are the result of impressionable youngsters’ idolatry towards them. Fame carries responsibility.
On that one the lemmings and the polar bears win my vote any time. Any other way and you are up a pole with greasy hands.
JOCELYNE
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The photograph of the polar bear was taken by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
