Even as I speak, the very last polar bear may be dying of hunger on account of climate change, on account of us. And I will sure miss the polar bears. Their babies are so warm and cuddly and trusting, just like ours. --Kurt Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect.

We’ve got 100 years left with polar bears. So says the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. One hundred years before the Arctic’s most iconic beast–now the poster animal for global warming–can no longer find food, and joins the ranks of saber tooth tigers, mastodons, and woolly rhinos. But there still is hope. So says Richard Ellis.

Photo: Richard Ellis

Ellis is an animal man. He’s written books on sharks, whales, mythical marine monsters, and the diminishing supply of tuna. In 1978, he painted a 35-foot long whale mural for the Denver Museum of Natural History. He’s written over eighty magazine articles in Natural History, Animal Kingdom, Curator, Smithsonian, Science Digest, and National Geographic. And now he’s taken on the polar bear.

“‘Paying homage to wild spirits’ is my personal and professional credo. Wild animals have always been at the core of my concern,” Ellis said in an interview with TakePart. “I have always admired the polar bear because of its beauty, power, and splendid isolation, so it was a natural successor to my studies of other large, charismatic species.”

As he dug deeper into the story of the polar bear, exploring hunting, mating, reproduction, and hibernation habits, he found himself in the midst of a study on the effects of global warming. “The problems of global warming were beginning to attract worldwide attention, so in one respect, the book was writing itself. How could I have known that Sarah Palin, then Governor of Alaska, would come out against polar bear conservation? Or that Al Gore would choose the polar bear as the symbol of the deterioration of the Arctic ice cap in An Inconvenient Truth? I chose to defend the polar bear from political and anti-environmental attacks because I was shocked that the great white bears, always perceived as invincible rulers of the Arctic, were threatened by anthropogenic factors that they, no matter how ferocious and iconic they were, were powerless to resist. In other worlds, I wrote this book for the bears.”

Simply put, the polar bear is dying out, and–as with many of the environment’s greatest losses–humans are, without a doubt, to blame. Ellis cites “greenhouse gas emissions, the paving over of much of the earth, the diversion of rivers, the death of coral reefs, the rise (and fall) of cities, deep mining, and anthropogenic extinctions” and quotes Leiceter University’s Jan Zalasiewicz as saying, “It’s extraordinary how a single species can have such an effect on the whole planet.” As he elaborates, the evidence begins to sound like so many scientific studies–a warning of the apocalypse. Glaciers will melt, warmer temperatures will allow mosquitoes to “extend their ranges and increase their biting rate,” and beaches will be sucked into the sea.

But despite all the well-deserved hype about global warming, telling the story of polar bears was, for Ellis, largely about the bears themselves.  The first three-quarters of the book describe the life span of the bear, human discovery and interaction with the intriguing creatures, and how its habitat has been affected by anthropogenic factors like carbon dioxide production. The disproportionate focus on the polar bear as an animal (and not merely the new “canary in the coalmine”) was intentional: “Before you can understand the plight of the great white bears, you have to understand a little about the bears themselves: how they got there, how they live, how they have interacted with humans since those humans invaded their territory. It wasn’t enough to say that “the bears are threatened by global warming;” it was necessary to tell about the history of global warming, and how it is leading irrevocably to the deterioration of the bears’ only habitat. In other words: no ice, no bears.”

Though his passion is anchored in the animal kingdom, Ellis is not oblivious or indifferent to the humanitarian travesties that global warming is causing, a factor which comes into play when he describes the polar bear’s unique relationship to the Inuit.  The Inuit people, he says, did not contribute very much to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere but will be among the most seriously affected.

“Just as polar bear populations have to respond to the melting of the Arctic ice cap, the people of the Arctic, who struggle for existence in an unforgiving and hostile climate, now find themselves victims of global warming as the atmosphere heats up, the ice melts, the permafrost disintegrates, and their traditional food items seals, walrus, whales, caribou, fish become scarce. To add insult to this catastrophic environmental injury, the people of the Arctic now find their very existence threatened: rising temperatures and rising waters will change the way they live, and industrial pollutants, such as mercury, PCBs, and DDT, poison the food they eat. The Eskimo and Inuit populations of Greenland, Alaska and Canada have a higher concentration of toxic chemicals in their bodies than any other people on earth.”

As for global warming contrarians who still fight the scientific evidence of global warming, Ellis can’t be bothered: “To me, those people who deny global warming are in the same category as those who deny evolution….I despair when I hear that such a large proportion of Americans either don’t believe it’s a problem, or don’t believe it’s actually happening,” he says. “There will be a special place in Hell reserved for those who supported the fossil fuel industry at the expense of the world’s precious wildlife.”

Photo: Richard Ellis

For now, he’s looking toward solutions, putting stock in the Obama administration to right the wrongs of the previous administration, who he declares “as blatantly anti-environment as any administration in American history.” As for the upcoming Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, drastic measures are a crucial component to the bears’ survival. “…[R]esolutions passed to diminish global warming and the spread of greenhouse gases will have a direct effect on the bears. How could they not? Polar bears, more than any other species, are dependent upon the Polar ice cap for their survival, and unless steps are taken to slow down the melting, the bears, without their life-sustaining ice pack, will swim into oblivion.”