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
00:19in the world and I'm not going to lose that wealth on dreams on windmills
00:26they lied to us they gave us false hope polar bears are a prime example of what human-caused
00:38global warming is doing this population here in Hudson Bay has declined by about 25% in the last
00:4530 years it's doing the same things to other species around the world but sometimes that's
00:52not so obvious and polar bears give us this flag this early warning if we don't take care of the
01:01polar bears it's going to be us that 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 right
01:33now is a very beautiful adult male bear it's not mating season so there are no mates to fight over
01:40and there's no food to fight over either just lying down protected from the wind by the willows and just
01:48waiting for the sea ice to come back my name is Tia Beckshoft I am a staff scientist with Polar
01:59Bears
01:59International I've been working with polar bears all around the Arctic for the past 15 years we
02:04collect a lot of information about the bear and we also collect biological samples and learn more
02:10about the health of the bear here in western Hudson Bay we put satellite colors on the bears and these
02:18colors send out GPS positions we can download those and we can learn how the bears are behaving and how
02:25they're responding to the changes in sea ice we have a roaming studio and we can invite specialists that
02:35I work with polar bears with climate change with sea ice and one of those people is dr. Steven Amstrup
02:43I'm the chief scientist at Polar Bears International prior to that I was in charge of polar bear research for
02:48the US
02:49federal government in Alaska for 30 years I was watching polar bears and studying them at a time that the
02:56world
02:57was 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 you're a polar bear because your dinner plate is literally going away and we know that since
03:42we've had satellite records being able to document how the sea ice has changed that it's been declining at
03:49almost 13% per decade for the last 40 years they are a prime example of what human-caused global
03:58warming is
04:00doing the health of the sea ice affects the lives of everyone around the globe the sea ice that is
04:07the
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
04:54from excessive harvests that had occurred decades before to seeing their habitat literally disappear our
05:04mission is to preserve polar bears and their sea ice habitat we're very focused on doing research
05:11on polar bears so that this information can be used by the decision-makers going forward
05:17I saw my first polar bear off of the coast of northwestern Alaska about 40 miles offshore from Cape Lisburn
05:24we're flying along over this rugged sea ice environment with these big blocks of ice sticking up and
05:30suddenly there's a polar bear in front of us and it was like holy there's a real wild polar bear
05:37I was a god I'm often asked how do you maintain a positive attitude how come you're not frustrated
05:50and I am frustrated I'm frustrated every single day we have known enough about global warming and about
05:58the causes of global warming since the late 70s we've known enough to do something about it but many of
06:06our leaders have simply been in denial our policy leaders our business leaders have either
06:12intentionally misled us or have been in denial about the truth and so we haven't done anything if
06:21we had started to act to halt warming to reduce emissions to stop our reliance on fossil fuels for
06:30transportation for power generation if we had started to take care of those things in the 1980s we
06:38wouldn't be facing a crisis now we're beyond the point where people who are self-motivated can save the
06:52world what we need is policy action vote for people who actually care about climate change and hold them
07:00accountable make your purchases with climate in mind invest in the businesses that are the most
07:08environmentally aware and the least wasteful discuss it with your friends your family your colleagues I
07:17still have hope that we will get on top of this and we've got a whole new generation of people
07:24coming in who are really excited about
07:27working on this because they know it's their future it's your future
