of which around eighty are sold to foreign trophy hunters who pay up to £18,000 for the privilege. Most are Americans keen to exploit a loophole in the US Marine Mammal Protection Act, allowing trophies to be brought home. Scientific consensus indicates that, between them, global warming and hunting could prompt a 30 per cent reduction in the polar bear population over the next few decades, a projection that suggests these particular poster boys are well aboard the extinction curve.
Global warming is melting the bears’ icy migration routes, a journey critical for breeding and for catching seals. Russian bear populations are threatened by poaching. Pollution is causing deformities and reproductive failures to bears in Norway. Tests have found that chemical compounds used in Europe and North America to reduce the flammability of household furnishings can reach the bears’ northern habitats and affect their thyroid and sexual glands. A high rate of hermaphroditism has been observed, making it possible that, when gunning down the odd male or two, you may also have killed a couple of females with the same bullet.
You know the drill
Apparently your Big Oil chums are actually banking on global warming. For them it can’t get hot enough quick enough. A quarter of the world’s remaining oil and gas is locked beneath the impenetrable frozen core of the Arctic, according to a US geological survey. Once, arguments over who owned this vast treasure trove of mineral wealth were academic. But climate change has made access and drilling possible. Ker-ching.
The new Klondike is already underway, the planet’s last great colonial land-grab. More oil naturally ensures more spills, thrills and all manner of mishaps. Provisional tests have seen support ships urgently summoned to tow melting icebergs from a collision course with exploratory oil rigs. And now you, too, can join in with the new oil rush. All you need is a mini-submarine, a British flag, and no qualms (as if!) about creating the next world war. Once kitted out, chug north beneath the Norwegian Sea until you reach the polar icecap where, adroitly guiding a robotic arm into the inky underworld, you plant a titanium Union Jack. You have claimed the Arctic as sovereign territory. That will cause rather a stir. When Russia did the same in the summer of 2007, it triggered an immediate international diplomatic incident. Kremlin cartographers had noticed a narrow isthmus of continental shelf which extended from Russia to the pole. They were having it. But Canada had noticed the same thing and within a day had ordered new icebreakers and stationed a thousand soldiers in the Arctic. Two military bases were announced for the region. Hours later, Danish scientists urgently set sail to lay claim to their share of the region’s wealth. Almost simultaneously, a US coastguard icebreaker headed off to map the seafloor north of Alaska. Ω
The first shots of the Arctic conflict had been fired. Relations between Norway and Russia remain tense. Canada, the US and Denmark could easily be sucked into any war over the Arctic, according to EU foreign-policy diplomats. In fact, European governments have been warned by Brussels to plan for a potentially lethal conflict between Russia and the West over the Arctic’s vast mineral resources.
Plan away, you say. When hostilities erupt, it’s curtains for the polar pin-up. Once the missiles start flying, who will care about a four-legged hermaphrodite who’s forgotten how to swim? In the meantime, fifteen oil companies have appealed to explore US-controlled areas of the Arctic. Shell has spent more than £20 million on leases to explore for fuel in the waters where tired polar bears are drowning. In Alaska, the US government wants to extract fifteen billion barrels of crude oil from the frozen Chukchi Sea, one of the bears’ last habitats, whose treacherous waters provided the iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912. Soon there will be no more icebergs, and there will be no more polar bears – but Godspeed an environmental catastrophe of titanic proportions.
WHAT’S THE DAMAGE?
* Full-scale war declared between EU and Kremlin after Russian warship turns away team of Norwegian scientists from polar circle. Possible.
* Investigation into uncorroborated reports of children mauled by polar bears. Inuit authorities say enough is enough and order bear cull. Months later, reports found to be false. Plausible.
* As Arctic oil wars escalate, a rig is sabotaged in the Beaufort Sea, causing an environmental catastrophe three times as bad as BP’s Prudhoe Bay spill in Alaska, which leached 250,000 gallons
of crude oil into a sensitive area. Predictable.
* US and Canadian governments come under fierce pressure to stop trophy hunting of polar bears after undercover investigation exposes the trade. Highly likely.
* Number of Inuits unable to feed themselves increases. A spokesman blames it on ‘blinkered’ environmentalists for valuing polar bears above human life. Probable.
Likelihood of polar bear population reaching unsustainable levels by 2020: 57%
Fur goodness’ sake
AGENDA
* Pelt it out
* Keep ‘em culling
* Seal their fate
Once, it was just fashionistas made to feel guilty for the deaths of these wide-eyed creatures but, nowadays, everyone is being told to repent for the deaths of seals. Scientists have monitored the ice on the Southern Gulf of St Lawrence, Canada, and their observations show that it is thinning, cracking, and splintering like crazy paving. The unstable ice means that seals keep sliding off and drowning – and you are being blamed. The crime you are accused of is a (rather unlikely) herculean effort to assist global warming, which is melting the ice on which these seals live. Preposterous. It seems you are being unfairly bashed over the head with the limp, bloody bodies of these cute creatures, despite the fact that the waning sea ice might simply be part of a natural progression, dominated, locals believe, by ten-year weather cycles.
For cod’s sake
Seal numbers off the eastern coast of Canada are estimated at just under six million, which is in fact almost three times what they were when culling began in the Seventies. In light of such numbers, Canada refuses to outlaw the seal culls which take place on the ice every spring. Authorities rationally argue that they would only consider the seal population to be in serious danger if it dipped below 1.8 million. This leaves a surplus of a few million seals, which could be readily killed without prompting any action or causing any discernible difference to the planet.
These seals are being accused of a crime against the human being, their greedy consumption of cod ensuring that innocent families starve. Canadian fishermen used to earn their living by harvesting cod, but this is no longer possible. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s because they have over-fished the seas beyond a sustainable point. No, these pesky seals with their insatiable appetite for fish are ingesting the entire food supply. And if that does not justify the greatest cull ever seen on the face of the planet, then little can. If you were a fisherman, you’d kill for a hot dinner.
Set back from the litter-strewn canyon that is the ‘A1 North’ is a small business that looks like any other lining this windblown artery of north London. Here, in Archway, is the nondescript UK headquarters of Alaska Brokerage International Limited, a major fur dealership and a specialist in the organized trade of seal skins and furs. Thankfully, the killing of seals for fur and the trade in pelts is not illegal and a reasonable proportion of the company’s trade relies on the annual Canadian seal hunts. After the skins are collected from the ice, they are taken to a plant in Newfoundland, from where they are dispatched back to Tromsoe, Norway, for full processing. From there, deals are brokered by external parties such as AB International for onward sale and export.
AB International is run by Peter Bartfeld who brokers deals for Canadian seal skins to be exported worldwide. Undercover