Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Polar Bears: Branding Global Warming
Polar Bear Story
By Nathanael Johnson nathanael47@gmail.com
TRT ~7:00
What is a polar bear? Okay, sure, it?s a big white member of the Ursus genus that lives in the north ? but it?s also a symbol. These days lots of people are thinking of polar bears in terms of what they signify ? more than what they actually are. When Time Magazine published a special report on global warming, editors put a polar bear on the cover. Reporter Nathanael Johnson went to find out what it is about polar bears that makes them such ideal poster-animals of global warming.
(Roar)
NJ: That ? is a polar bear. It?s about 4 feet away, and from this range there?s nothing abstract about it. There?s just claws and fur and teeth. I?ll come back to this very real bear in a moment, but first, I?d like to take a step back and ? (roar) okay, maybe a few steps back, maybe I?ll just close this gate.
(Gate amb)
NJ: From this distance, the polar bear stops being a pure physical threat and becomes something ? iconic. It used to be that when people thought of polar bears they also thought of ice and snow. But now, people are starting to associate polar bears with something completely different: heat records and melting glaciers.
AS 1: We?ve certainly had a great deal of interest in the polar bear link with global warming.
NJ: Annie Strickler works for the Sierra Club and she says that in this last year more and more people have been calling to ask about climate change and polar bears.
AS 2: It?s something that you can imagine and envision and frankly see happening right now. So it?s something that?s very easy for people to understand ? as this white ice melts this great white bear could be in serious trouble.
NJ: Here?s the problem: Many polar bears survive by swimming out to the ice flows and eating the seals there. But now the ice is thinner and farther from shore. Scientists have found polar bears that have drowned after swimming 60 miles from shore in search of ice. Now, that?s a sad story, but global warming generates plenty of other sad stories. What is it about polar bears that makes the phones ring at the Sierra Club?
MF 1: A polar bear is the ideal spokesanimal ? even though in real life they are probably pretty violent animals, from far away their fuzziness and huge paw pads and adorable small eyes make them an ideal animal to relate to.
NJ: Meg Frost runs the website Cute Overload dot com ? where she mines the internet for the cutest possible pictures. She has even developed rules of cuteness. Polar bears succeed at rule 18 ? have a teeny tiny tail, rule 16 ? small ear to head ratio and rule number 10 ? if you haven?t grown into your feet yet, it?s cute. I asked her ? as an arbiter of all things cute - to take a look at a few pictures of polar bears.
MF 2: Aww. Another rule of cuteness is having eyes at the same level of your ears is cute. (laughs) And here?s a picture of this polar bear with beady eyes and tiny ears around the same level on his head.
NJ: Then there?s a picture of the bear you heard roaring earlier:
MF2b: (cackles) This is perfect. This is perfect. There?s something about showing your vulnerability by just lying out and spread eagle legs.
NJ: Be vulnerable ? that?s rule number two.
MFopt2: There?s just an instant human reaction to an animal that needs help that can?t really help themselves
MFopt1: Regardless of race, age, background ? people relate to animals on a very passionate level. ((The folks that come to CO are all ages, every type of profession.)) There?s something about animals that people just connect with directly
A lot more directly than people can connect with an abstract concept ? like climate change. But, as Frost says, it?s one thing to see a picture and quite another to meet a bear in person.
(Roar)
NJ: Which brings us back here: to the bear tunnel at the back of the San Francisco Zoo. Animal keeper Deb Cano is feeding the three polar bears. They each stand at their window just on the other side of a grate.
DC 1: Pika decided to give up horse meat about 3 years ago she doesn?t want to touch the stuff ? so she prefers the canned food prescription diet ?canine ? it?s a chicken based food.
NJ: She unwraps the meat and tosses it through the bars, making sure not to get too close.
(chomp chomp snarfle snarfle)
DC1b: And Andy likes the ground horsemeat canine diet but won?t touch the straight muscle meat hunk that I gave Ulu. They all have their own personalities and they get what they want.
NJ: It?s Cano?s job to figure those personalities out. She knows that Andy ? for instance ? is mad for pears.
DC 2: She was chewing something red ? she kept rubbing it along the bars but not giving it to me. So I went an got a pear, and she had the thing in her mouth and she was just kind of holding it. And the next thing I did ? there was a maintenance man working here - and I said, let?s just go lean up against the wall here, and I bit into the pear and she spit the plastic object right though the bars toward me. It was a small finger puppet ? so I gave her a new pear. So they are smart. And they know what you want.
NJ: Cano does thinks the bears are intelligent, majestic, powerful ? but not exactly cute.
DC 3: they are unbelievable animals and never do they let me assume they are not a perfect killing machine. So there?d a lot of respect there. And there?s no loyalty ? just because I feed them for 11 odd years there?s no loyalty. They bite the hand that feeds them. It?s all about eating and that?s why they?re going to have some issues with global warming. Seals are not going to have a place to haul out and polars are just going to have to change what?s on the menu.
NJ: And in the short term ? polar bears may be able to change what?s on the menu. As temperatures rise some bears are drowning but others are thriving in the mild winters. In the long term, most scientists agree that if the ice disappears ? so will the polar bear. But Annie Strickler at the Sierra Club says there?s still time to make changes.
AS 3: We are at a point where a majority of Americans are aware of global warming they are concerned about it and they want to know what they can do to help and if we take action today and the next few years we really can reverse this course and save iconic creatures like polar bears.
NJ: And there?s something about sinking at sea that captures the public imagination. When the Titanic went down it spurred a Senate investigation, policy changes and a revolution in ship design. The sunken Lusitania and Arizona became icons that helped push the US into the first and second world wars. There are certainly things besides polar bears that make people think about global warming ? glaciers are receding, hurricanes are bigger, there was heat wave this summer. But none of those facts can be summed up by a simple picture. If the culmination of these events really do a create demand for change, historians may well remember polar bears as the Lusitania of global warming.
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