Expedition ship has come back from the Arctic with bad news.

Yes, that's a new description for me, animals are the canaries in the mine.
I believe that societies can be judge from the way we treat animals. The links between abuse of animals and abuse of children or people is well established. It shouldn't surprise us that the deaths of creatures in the Arctic and the rain Forrests are warnings to us. We humans have the power and also, the responsibility.

So many people think that so long as it isn't them suffering, it is OK, that animals can go extinct but humans will be immune. They don't understand that the animals are the canaries in the mine - they show what can happen to humans too. If we don't reverse the decline while we can, the result will inevitably be a much harsher environment for all.

Sorry Elegran - it's been one of those days rather.

About 28 years ago I was part of a group taking children to Chester Zoo. I watched the solitary polar bear striding up and down, up and down, up and down, shaking his head from side to side. We were what was then called Approved Social Workers, that is trained in mental health and approved to use the legal powers to take people who were mentally ill to hospital. The two colleagues included in the group shared my distress, we felt if that bear had been a person, we would have wanted to help him go to a place of safety.
Two weeks later, he was found "drowned" in the tiny pool inside his enclosure. Those fantastic creatures shouldn't be in zoos for sure. To see their natural home melting, to watch footage of starving bears and their cubs is heart breaking isn't it.
Is it that there are too many people or is it that too many people don't understand their responsibilities to the planet.

Too many people on planet earth.

It wasn't a dig at you, Iam. Of course you understand that.

The polar bear is an iconic animal, and seeing its possible probable extinction should bring home to even the sceptics just how close we are to disaster, but I don't think most people see the detail of extinction. As the icefloes get further apart, the bears have to swim further and further from one of them to another (with cubs swimming behind them) to find and catch seals, their main food source. The cubs can get tired and unable to keep up, and drown.

Elegran, I do understand that of course. The polar bear analogy was one I used 20 years or more ago to encourage children to consider the environment. They also understand the wider implications but - that doesn't mean I've forgotten the polar bears.

So many scary, depressing things going on - record numbers of hurricanes, thawing of the tundra, ice shelves calving, megafires, new pests and pathogens thriving in a warming climate, droughts here in California and the rest of the western US... Between these things, a president with no intelligence or empathy, and the pandemic, I find I'm feeling down a majority of the time now.

It isn't just the polar bears!

I can’t stand it.

I haven't read your link Elegran but a friend posted images from this trip. Absolutely terrifying. My children used to tease me years ago, about asking them to switch lights off, not use the clothes drier etc. Now they too are worrying about the polar bears