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Matt Dyer, a Maine legal attorney at 49, was asleep in his tent when he was attacked by the polar bear. He opened his eyes to see the bear’s forelegs looming over him, silhouetted against the light of the bright moon.
He can still recall crying out for help when the bear bit him. His cries stopped when he felt his jaw break as the bear’s teeth cut through his head and neck.
“He was trying to get me out of my tent with his mouth, holding the tent down with his hands,” he recalls in one of many interviews about the terrifying attack.
Dyer was among seven American hikers that set out on the wilderness adventure of their dreams in summer 2013. They were dropped by seaplane on the edge of a beautiful fjord in northern Norway. Canada to experience a place both pristine and magical – the sales ad called it “a land of spirits and polar bears rarely seen by humans”.
Dyer was dragged away, he explains, “in the mouth of the bear”, with his face banging against the bear’s chest: “I can remember looking out and I could see his belly, his leg and everything. He didn’t take his claws to me, which is good.”
Quick-thinking companions used a flare gun and a flare gun to startle a bear into dropping it. The bear then ran for his life.
World in meltdown
The group was located at the top of the world, 530 miles from Arctic Circle. They were experiencing the frightening consequences of the man-made melting down that is causing starving polar bears and other animals to attack humans.
International Polar Bear Day is an annual celebration that takes place every February 27th. It coincides with the time when polar bears sleep in their dens. It is intended to raise awareness about their endangered status and, perhaps more importantly, what their plight means to all of us.
Global warming is the wildcard. It’s the game-changer that could throw an already chaotic world into chaos. Sea-level rises may cause land to disappear at the right time.
It could disrupt water cycles at a time when freshwater supplies are scarce. And if there’s still enough soil for planting, it could reduce crop yields across the globe by as much as a fifth.
Only last December, we saw record-breaking temperatures of 19.4C on the island of Kodiak – the highest-ever December reading recorded in Alaska. The polar bears who are suffering from the loss of sea-ice are being Forcibly to move from America to Russia.
The Amazonian desert
One thing is for sure – business as usual is not an option; not if we want to bequeath to our children and grandchildren a world anything like as beautiful and plentiful as the one we inherited. We could be on the verge of catastrophic climate change if we continue to rely on our over-production of meat. That’s without the negative role of other industries, like energy and transport.
As the temperature rises, the world changes. Drastic changes to water cycles, ecosystems and woodlands are likely this century – whole forests could disappear with the Amazon turning to savannah or even desert.
The world could be hit by more severe storms and droughts, floods, and crop failures. This may sound like apocalyptic, but it’s only what leading climate authorities like Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have been warning about for some time.
People will be greatly affected. Low-lying areas could disappear underwater, including many American cities. Bangladesh could disappear.
Millions of ‘climate migrants’ are likely to be forced from their homelands by extremes of weather, crop failures and conflicts over increasingly scarce resources.
My fear is that society may continue to operate as normal, despite our efforts to change our ways and address the climate crisis. After all, we – with our politics of five-year time horizons and growth-driven economics – are only programmed to do what is in our own immediate interests, and perhaps those of our offspring.
Animal cruelty is on the rise
If Homo sapiens continue to produce, consume and waste food as they currently do, they will continue to be able to feed themselves for another few decades or so – but there’ll be nothing left for nature.
In order to continue business as usual, it could mean pretending that intensifying farming is sustainable. This would be ignoring the lessons learned from recent decades. Animal cruelty will be increased in an effort to keep things as they are.
We have the option of making a decision. We still have plenty of time to make it.
As a society, we could choose the route increasingly called for by scientists and thought-leaders alike – changing our diets to be less reliant on climate-busting meat and dairy, ensuring that farming with less animals also involves nature-friendly forms of production. The switch to agroecological or regenerative farming that places animals where they belong, in the countryside, on grassy pastures, and helps to restore soils.
The decision is up to us. I hope we choose a better way, not only for the polar bears and the animals in the country, wild or farmed, but also for our children.
It is not just the polar bears who are at risk. Our species’ future could also be at risk.
Philip Lymbery is the chief executive of Compassion in Farming International. He is also a United Nations Food Systems Champion. He is also the author of Farmageddon, The True Cost of Cheap Meat, and Dead Zone: Where the Wild Things Were. He is on Twitter @philip_ciwf
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