For Immediate Release

DATE, 2007

Contact: Chad Kister (740) 707-4110; chadkister@gmail.com; www.chadkister.com

Local Contact

Polar Bear Survival tour to present (Location, Time)

Residents of (CITY) have a unique opportunity to hear firsthand about the massive impacts of climate change in the Arctic that threatens not only the polar bear, but humanity as well with a presentation at (time) in (location).  The polar bear is the canary in the coal mine for climate change, and their rapid decline shows that we are in a serious crisis in desperate need of political action.

 With Arctic ice continuing to decline, the US Fish and Wildlife Service predicts that the polar bear could be extinct in the wild as early as 2040, when scientists say the Arctic Ocean will likely be nearly ice-free unless massive changes are made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

 Arctic Quest and Arctic Melting Author Chad Kister is launching another speaking tour around the United States and Canada, mostly by train, April and May to promote wilderness for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and action on climate change, both needed to protect the polar bear and so much more.

 Kister is traveling by fuel efficient train, which gets up to 40 times better fuel efficiency per passenger mile compared to flying or driving, and a major solution to climate change.

Arctic champions in Congress have introduced legislation to protect the Arctic Refuge coastal plain as wilderness, and this tour is an effort to show them support, as well as showing the need for the USFWS to demand a mandatory reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to save the polar bear, and so much more.  The coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is by far the densest denning ground of polar bear in the world. The tour will help spread the word nationwide about the need to lobby for wilderness protection.

With his Arctic Melting presentation, Kister shows the very latest of climate change's impacts to the Arctic and Alaska , having just finished the second edition updates to the book.  The presentation shows the critical need to immediately begin reducing fossil fuel emissions and replace them with solar, wind, efficiency and other renewable resources.

 Citizens can take action online until April 7 to support the USFWS proposal to list the polar bear as threatened at www.arcticrefuge.org.

Polar bear live in 19 population groups across the circumpolar Arctic.  All are expected to go into decline toward extinction with current trends of thinning ice.  Ice has thinned 42 percent in the last 40 years, as measured by U.S. submarine data.  Melting in Greenland has doubled in the last 5 years according to NASA senior Scientist James Hansen.  He also said that sea levels could rise 80 feet, and that the melting is far more dynamic and fast than previously fast, and accelerating exonentially.

In his Arctic Melting book, Kister has a chapter detailing a 2004 Pentagon report that found climate change a more serious threat than terrorism.

See the first 5 minutes of Caribou People now online, and some of Kister’s Berkeley Arctic Melting presentation (now much improved), as well as the updates and action alerts at www.arcticrefuge.org and www.chadkister.com.

Kister is the author of Arctic Quest and Arctic Melting (Common Courage Press), as well as the producer of the 50 minute film Caribou People.  His next book, Against All Odds: The Struggle to Save The Ridges is coming out in a few weeks.