The+Death+of+Polar+Bears

Go to Home Go to Gallery of Death =The Death of Polar Bears = “The picture is worth a thousand words." Very sad thousand words. This picture tells the story of hapless polar bears clinging on to whatever is left of their home.” With this picture and his comment, Dr. Prem Jagyasi alerts people around the world about the grim realities of global warming and climate change. The picture adequately portrays endangered polar bears as the Arctic ice melts due to rising temperature of the earth. Global warming is one of the hottest issues in today’s society. What is global warming? It refers to an increase in the average temperature of the earth that results from the greenhouse effect. In fact, there is evidence that temperatures are rising four times faster in the Antarctic region than the rest of the earth. While there are a number of evidences that reinforce this theory, there are two major and crucial ones: a melting Antarctic ice and endangered polar bears.

 According to the trend now in the last few years, there are fewer bears in the northern region than many years before. Their numbers have decreased by nearly one-fourth to about 25,000 in just twenty years, which indicates that the species might be extinct in the near future. The main reason for the death of many polar bears is that they suffer from hunger. Every year, polar bears move their home when the winter comes and the sea freezes. Only when the sea is frozen from October to November can the polar bears move to the Arctic ocean. However, in these days, the sea does not freeze until the middle of November, posing a risk to the polar bears’ survival.

 “The bears have always maintained an average height of 10 ft and a weight of 1700 lbs.,” according to Dr. Prem Jagyasi. However, scientists have discovered that the bears are now much thinner from the struggle for survival. They have to eat 16,000 kcal per day, which is seven times more than a man, but there is not too much they can eat on the coastline. A dead animal is extremely hard to find in the region. Accordingly, they eat grass, some bushes, or even kelp and seaweed on the shore. That is all they can eat. It is inevitable that they suffer from hunger as they wander around and wait for winter to come.

 The picture effectively illustrates these facts, placing two polar bears awaiting their fate on small pieces of melted glacier. They seem like waiting patiently for the ice to be formed and the sea to be frozen. The simple and basic colors: the black sea, the white polar bears, and the pale ice seem to highlight their unfortunate and depressing situation. In particular, the strange-shaped glaciers give two effective feature to the picture. First, they indicate the fact they are being melted due to climate change. Second, by showing polar bears barely standing on the edge of the glaciers, it gives an impression that polar bears are in extreme danger.

 The picture also arouses emotional sympathy from a viewer. First, a relatively small and skinny appearance of polar bears suggests that they have been starving. Their desperate and hopeless facial expression implies that they have been suffered from their environment. Third, two polar bears seem like a mother and her child. All of these implications eventually lead to bringing out a sympathetic feeling from a viewer, making him ponder about the cause of the despairing situation, and making him think that he should take some kind of action to help those polar bears.

 The future of these creatures seems seriously grim. They are losing their health and even their lives, as their hunting season is considerably shortened. Last year, one of the leading climate experts predicted that the Arctic could be completely free of ice in 40 years due to global warming. In other words, there will only be an open sea in the polar region with nothing more than a few small glaciers in the region. It might feel like the distant future, but it is the reality of the Earth now. Instead of hurting them with our greed, we need to learn to coexist with these animals. We need to let them play and hunt on the frozen sea. It is the moral duty as a human, the major contributor to global warming, to fix the problem as fast as possible. Accordingly, we should be cautious about the realities of global warming and focus on finding more ways aiming for environmental improvement.

= Works Cited = Jagyasi, Prem. “Polar Bears on the Verge of Extinction, USA Delays Action.” Green Living Guide, 22 Aug. 2014, drprem.com/green/polar-bears-on-the-verge-of-extinction-usa-delays-action. Tomlinson, Simon. "Photographer Captures Heartbreaking Image of an Arctic Polar Bear Which 'Starved to Death as a Result of Climate Change'." Daily Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 18 Feb. 2016.