Message from Nanook

I am Nanook. My name in the Inuit language is Nanuk and means master or king of bears. My Eskimo brothers have always treated me with great respect. Even when it was necessary to hunt me for food and clothing, they feared and revered me...and so they would make offerings of weapons and food. It was the old way and we understood our place in the great scheme of the stars. Men understood the polar bear and we understood mankind.
But now, the earth has changed so much, we struggle to survive, and watch our cubs starve to death because we cannot find enough food without the ice floes to rest upon. We see our brothers and sisters drown when they swim too far from land and do not have the strength to swim home without a place to rest and regain their strength.
We have watched females too weak to deliver their cubs and newborn cubs too small to survive. We have witnessed cannibalism among our species because of desperate hunger. No longer are we the kings of our world.
We know we are not the only ones who suffer. Many species of the great north are feeling the effects of our world melting away, the only way of life we know, disappearing. Every day, great cliff faces of ice fall into the water and huge pieces of sheet ice break away and float off into the ocean to melt and raise the sea levels.
We no longer understand mankind. You have the means to stop this senseless destruction and yet do nothing but talk.
Because we are at the top of the world we see our environment breaking up and vanishing and have nowhere to go. There is no 'further north'. At the moment, few men care about our fate, but soon you will all start to feel the effects of global warming. When it is at your doorstep and destroys your food supplies, makes your environment unliveable and damages the quality of your life you will suddenly realize the danger. It may be too late to act by then.
I will not survive much longer, nor will my species, and when I join my fallen  brothers, remember me and remember my words. Become aware of the tragic extinction happening to species around the world and of your part in their end.
Become aware of the planet heating up dangerously fast because of mankind's careless behavior. And change your ways. You live in selfish oblivion. Ignorance is no longer an excuse.


Nanook