Monthly Archives: September 2014

“The Politics of Polar Bears” lengthy excerpt airs across Canada – cue the outrage

Umbrage alert! Last night, a half-length short form of the powerful and balanced documentary “The Politics of Polar Bears” aired across Canada on the CBC’s flagship TV news program, The National.

Polar_Bear_2004-11-15_Wapusk Nat Park_Wikipedia

Right after it aired, they followed up with a lengthy online summary by the producer of the film, Reg Sherren (Polar bears: Threatened species or political pawn?”, September 2, with video of the 19 minute short program). Check out the comments below it! Excerpts and my comments below.

[Links to the full length film here and in my previous posts here and here]

UPDATED April 27 2015: Video now available on Youtube, imbedded below Full length video no longer available, short one at CBC here.

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Has the tide turned on polar bears as icons of global warming?

The CBC in Canada is pretty much a mirror image of the BBC in the UK, ABC in Australia and PBS in the US. So you might appreciate my shock at the almost unbelievable balance contained in the recently broadcasted CBC documentary, “The Politics of Polar Bears: Tracking the Celebrity Bear.

The film is a profound change from the hype and pessimism that has dominated the polar bear issue in Canada and abroad, supported unchallenged by the CBC. Finally, TV viewers were given some decently balanced perspective on the status of polar bears in  Western Hudson Bay.

If the take-away message tipped towards reason and optimism rather than panic over the status of polar bears, it’s because the evidence was strongly in that direction.

Politics of polar bears title

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