Okay, okay, I admit it. I love Knut. He’s cute, he’s cuddly, he’s adorable. When he first became popular, animal activists wanted him destroyed, because being raised by humans isn’t a polar bear thing to do. I suppose being euthanized is. Anyway, he survived that attempt on his life, and led a happy few little weeks, being his sweet and adorable self. But unfortunately, Knut has gotten himself in some hot waters recently. First he was suspected of killing his next door neighbour Yan Yan, the lethargic panda. Seems like Knut generated some long line-ups, and bored people at the end of the line decided to visit Yan Yan instead, who promptly died from all the attention. It appears that Pandas can’t take camera flashes. Go figure. So now, after delightful little Knut survived that character assassination, I just spotted him on the evening news as the poster boy for Global Warming. What an orphaned son of a zoo raised polar bear has to do with global warming, I don’t know. But there he was, amongst melting icecaps, and burning forests, there was Knut, jumping off his little floe into a little pond. Making a cute little splash. And back to flooded streets, and desiccated deserts, fleeing people.

Born in a zoo in Berlin. Shunned by his mother, accused of murdering his neighbour, now he’s rooting for David Suzuki. I think he would have been better off dead.

I was reading, with interest, the Citizen’s Art Quiz ‘Life is wonderful for Forsyth’ (Ottawa Citizen, Thursday, February 8, and subsequent dog related follow up). I was impressed with Ms. Forsyth’s answers until I laughed out loud reading the sentence: “Lately, I’ve been worried about the polar bears”. I laughed because everything else she mentions in the quiz screams ‘I don’t give a hoot about polar bears’: from eating black cod in New York and loving her blackberry, to having a new gown for every performance in cities across the globe, and vacationing on Anguilla.
Ms. Forsyth, if you were one of those people who believe humans are 90% certain to be responsible for global warming, and the related decline in polar bear population, and claim to be concerned about it lately, would you not do anything in your power to reduce your own greenhouse gas emissions, encourage others to follow your example, and last but not least, abstain from eating eat cod since that takes food out of the polar bears’ food chain?
As I am pretty sure Ms. Forsyth didn’t bike or jog to New York or Calgary, didn’t row to Anguilla, didn’t made sure the black cod in New York was farmed, didn’t do her research on how and where her silk gowns are produced, and didn’t look into the fact the blackberry she loves so much was manufactured in a Kyoto exempt, coal powered polluting factory in China, I’m left wondering if Ms. Forsyth is genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of our polar bears, or if being concerned about them is really just something you say.