Note to Greenpeace - it's not about the polar bears!

I spotted a banner on the excellent Greenbang site from Greenpeace, which is exhorting us to save the polar bear by donating £3 per month. Surely this kind of "save the fluffy animals" approach to climate change is way out of date? It's not that I don't care about the polar bears, but much more is at stake. And photos of cute creatures simply trivialise the largest single threat to mankind ever. It's our own extinction we're facing, not some animal most of us have only encountered in zoos.

It's not that I don't applaud Greenpeace's work, I just think they need better ads - especially on a site like Greenbang, which is likely to attract readers already quite well informed on climate issues. Any species going extinct is a bad thing - but if we can save ourselves, the polar bears will survive too.

Melting ice caps threaten arctic foxes

A recent study by researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks has found that arctic foxes may be just as threatened as polar bears by reduced access to sea ice. They tracked fourteen foxes as they endured their first arctic winter, and only three survived - by spending five months travelling for 3,000 miles across frozen sea ice and scavenging seal carcasses left by polar bears. None of the 11 foxes that remained on the mainland survived.

The researchers were surprised that the foxes spent so long on sea ice but concluded that their odessy is essential to find food to sustain them through the winter. Sea ice is expected to reach record low levels this winter, making it harder for the foxes to travel and potentially leading to lower survival rates. There is also the risk of increased conflict with humans, as the foxes search for food near settlements.