Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Day 2 of my arctic journey

I woke up today morning to a loud ruckus outside. "WHY IS A HUMAN HERE? His people are the ones that will ultimately destroy us!" I stepped out of my tent to find a bunch of Bears that looked like they were going to kill me. The only thing between me and the bears was Skii. He said "No, this human is trying to help us. He is one of those people called an "environmentalist". One of the other bears asked "what is a environmentalist?" Skii replied “An environmentalist is someone who cares for the environment and wants to help it". The bears calmed down and they weren't mad at me anymore. One of them walked up to me, "Is there anything you can do about our ice melting. We have to swim up to 60 miles to get our food. We are good swimmers but we are used to swimming next to the shore. The ice floes with our food on them end up floating away so we have to swim far to get our food and risk the chance of drowning". "Yeah" another bear said, "it is hard for us to find fish because the humans take a lot of it" I told them why the ice was melting "We humans drive cars for transportation. These cars put carbon dioxide into the air. Nothing will make humans get rid of cars but we can make cars better. Humans have a lot of technology and with what they have today; they can make cars that are fuel efficient." The bears understood a lot of what I said, then a bear asked "are these cars the only things that produce greenhouse gases? I know your "water walkers" called boats also release carbon dioxide." "Well, you see, humans use electricity to power their homes. Everything from computers to toys use this electricity" Skii knew most of this but he was listening intently. "What is wrong with electricity?" someone asked from the crowd. I replied "to get the electricity, we use coal power plants. We burn the coal which ultimately produces energy. But the negative part of this is that a lot of carbon dioxide is released into the air which collects with the other greenhouse gases and causes the ice to melt." "Can’t you use technology to find a different way to produce power?" Skii asked. "We have many alternate methods, and I would love to talk about this, but is it okay if I eat breakfast first?"

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