a global warming story

by Julieta Flores

The polar bears stood there, in the freezing North Pole, while they saw the huge ice glaciers fall from above.

"What's happening?" asked one of the daughters to her mom.

"Well, it seems the air is getting a bit warm.  I'm not sure what is the problem," the mother polar bear explained.

Suddenly another humongous chunk of the glacier fell down.

"Ahhh!!!" cried the daughter.  They were all frightened. The entire polar bear family ran away from the ice berg that nearly fell on them.

"Why is this happening?" the older daughter asked her dad.

"I am not sure, but I think it's this global warming thing we've been hearing about," explained the father.

"I am scared.  What is global warming?" asked the younger daughter.

"It is when the air gets polluted and the particles create a process of global warming.  I don't completely understand it.  Then again, I am a polar bear and we don't have a lot of universities up here in the arctic. But the bottom line is that things are getting hotter."

"Is that why the ice is melting?" asked the younger daughter.

"I guess so.  But it's nothing to worry about," answered the father.  He knew he was lying.  He knew he was afraid, too, but it felt out of his control.  If they were going to die, he might as well shelter them with a lie than expose them to the harder element called truth.

After another year, it continued to get worse.  Each season felt warmer.  Each year the ice dissapated. The prey dissipated.  More than half of their habitat became ocean. The father died first.  They said it was more out of a loss of hope than anything else.  The older sister was the next victim.  This time it was starvation.

Ten years passed and most of the North pole was melted away.  The earth had more water.  Famine and disease spread as nations struggled to provide basic food.  Some countries were flooded and others were dry.

Finally, the last polar bear remained.  She was the youngest daughter, alone on a sheet of ice. She knew that without a mate, the race would soon disappear. She was very depressed, living a life of loneliness. The polar bear, older now, wiser than before, stared at place where the family had once stood.  No glacier remained.  Just an enormous, blue ocean.

"It's all gone.  All of it," she said. She sighed and kept walking along the narrow strip of ice. It was difficult with such little space to walk and such little food remaining.

The sun baked down and polar bear died in isolation.

As for the people, they weren't much better.  Some of them died in the floods.  Some of them died from the pollution.  Nations started wars over resources.  Neighbors attacked one another.  The oceans broke free, but there was precious little fresh water.  Economies collapsed.  The world was no longer fit for life.

And so we became the polar bear, sitting alone on a block of ice, awaiting our fate in a planet that could no longer support life.


photo credit - flickr creative commons