00:03the point of no return is no longer over the horizon we've lost 50% of the Arctic ice in
00:12the last 40 years this is a global crisis we are now the number one energy producer in the world
00:19and I'm not going to lose that wealth on dreams on windmills they lied to us they
00:29gave us false hope polar bears are a prime example of what human-caused global warming is doing this
00:41population here in Hudson Bay has declined by about 25% in the last 30 years it's doing the
00:48same things to other species around the world but sometimes that's not so obvious and polar bears
00:55give us this flag this early warning if we don't take care of the polar bears it's going to be
01:02us
01:03that we're worried about next
01:26we're just chit-chatting here right now while the polar bear cam is live what you're looking at
01:33right now is a very beautiful adult male bear it's not mating season so there are no mates to fight
01:40over and there's no food to fight over either just lying down protected from the wind by the willows
01:47and just waiting for the sea ice to come back my name is Tia Beckshoft I am a staff scientist
01:58with
01:58polar bears international I've been working with polar bears all around the Arctic for the past 15
02:03years we collect a lot of information about the bear and we also collect biological samples and learn
02:09more about the health of the bear here in western Hudson Bay we put satellite colors on the bears
02:17and these colors send out GPS positions we can download those and we can learn how the bears
02:24are behaving and how they're responding to the changes in sea ice we have a roaming studio and we
02:33can invite specialists that work with polar bears with climate change with sea ice and one of those
02:39people is dr. Steven Amstrup I'm the chief scientist at polar bears international prior to that I was in charge
02:47of
02:47polar bear research for the US federal government in Alaska for 30 years I was watching polar bears and
02:54studying them at a time that the world was literally changing the ice was literally melting under their feet
03:02some people say polar bears are only a threatened species if I were to push you off the roof of
03:09a
03:09hundred-story building are you threatened until you pass by the tenth floor or are you endangered all
03:16the way down a lot of people have heard the polar bears need sea ice but oftentimes they're missing the
03:29second part of the sentence polar bears need sea ice in order to be able to catch seals that's a
03:36crisis if
03:37you're a polar bear because your dinner plate is literally going away and we know that since we've
03:42had satellite records being able to document how the sea ice has changed that it's been declining at
03:49almost 13 percent per decade for the last 40 years they are a prime example of what human-caused global
03:58warming
04:00is doing the health of the sea ice affects the lives of everyone around the globe the sea ice that
04:07is the
04:07habitat of the polar bear is also kind of the world's refrigerator it makes this nice white cover and that
04:14reflects the warmth from the sun's rays back into space some of that heat stays for a while near the
04:21earth's crust because greenhouse gases capture it the more of that in the atmosphere the slower the
04:28transition of that heat back up into space now that we're burning all these fossil fuels we are releasing
04:34a rampant amount of co2 into the atmosphere and that thickens this blanket that we have around the world
04:42trapping the heat and warming up our planet we went from documenting recovery of polar bears in Alaska from
04:55excessive harvests that had occurred decades before to seeing their habitat literally disappear our mission
05:04is to preserve polar bears and their sea ice habitat we're very focused on doing research on polar bears so
05:13that this information can be used by the decision makers going forward I saw my first polar bear off of
05:20the coast of northwestern Alaska about 40 miles offshore from Cape Lisbon we're flying along over this rugged
05:26sea ice environment with these big blocks of ice sticking up and suddenly there's a polar bear in front of
05:33us and
05:33it was like holy there's a real wild polar bear I was a gog I'm often asked how do you
05:47maintain a positive
05:48attitude how come you're not frustrated and I am frustrated I'm frustrated every single day we have
05:55known enough about global warming and about the causes of global warming since the late 70s we've known
06:02enough to do something about it but many of our leaders have simply been in denial our policy leaders our
06:10business leaders have either intentionally misled us or have been in denial about the truth and so we
06:19haven't done anything if we had started to act to halt warming to reduce emissions to stop our reliance on
06:28fossil fuels for transportation for power generation if we had started to take care of those things in
06:36the 1980s we wouldn't be facing a crisis now we're beyond the point where people who are self-motivated can
06:52save the world what we need is policy action vote for people who actually care about climate change and
07:00hold them accountable make your purchases with climate in mind invest in the businesses that are
07:07the most environmentally aware and the least wasteful discuss it with your friends your family your colleagues I
07:16I still have hope that we will get on top of this and we've got a whole new generation of
07:24people coming
07:25in who are really excited about working on this because they know it's their future it's your future
07:45you
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