In all of their fluffiness, fierceness, and domination, polar bears exhibit the beauty of adaptation. They can wrestle on ice, sniff out camouflaged prey, and navigate in frigid depths. But one thing they can’t do is protect their penises from bone-damaging pollutants.
Biologists hypothesized that polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a 20th century industrial machine chemical banned in 1979, was affecting arctic species. Realizing that arctic fish were consuming the chemical, they considered the process of biomagnification: if seals were eating contaminated fish, and polar bears were eating contaminated seals, polar bears could be in danger.
Christian Sonne, a biologist at Denmark's University of Aarhus, took up the hypothesis and conducted multiple studies. One concerned the effects of PCBs, a banned yet lingering-in-the-water industrial chemical, on the polar bear penile bone: baculum.
Sonne and his team gathered bacula from Canada, North Greenland, and several sub-populations in between. They measured both the levels of PCB substance in the bears’ blubber and mineral density in the bacula. The correlation showed that bears with higher concentrations of PCBs had lower mineral density in their baculum. The conclusion: PCBs could bring the species to genital osteoporosis.
"The combination of chemicals and climate change are a deadly cocktail for the polar bears,” said Sonne to ScienceNordic. “Climate change is having a tremendous negative effect on the polar bears' ability to find food, and when the bears begin to eat into their fatty tissue, the chemicals that have accumulated in the fatty tissue will enter the bloodstream and cause them harm. This is an extremely serious problem.”
In a previous study, Sonne found that a number of other pollutants have been affecting the bears’ skull density, too. And perfluoroalkyl, carboxylates, and perfluoroalkyl sulfonates, showed a damaging effect on reproductive and developmental problems in the mammals’ brain, blood, liver, and muscles.
“The correlations all point the same way: Polar bears are affected by pollution," said Andrew Derocher regarding Sonne’s bacula experiment to National Geographic.
If a single chemical lingering from decades ago shows correlation to genital damage, what about the copious, homologous chemicals currently being dumped into our waters? Derocher, a professor of biological sciences at Canada's University of Alberta and scientific adviser to Polar Bears International, added that the several hundred different pollutants could be damaging the arctic mammal.
So who is dumping these penis-endangering chemicals into the water? Science-rejecting, Congressional Republicans, Koch Industries lobbyists, and other pollutant mercenaries are being paid to melt the arctic, drown baby polar bears, and destroy penises. Whether this comes from avarice or the frustration from their own erectile dysfunction doesn’t matter. Their actions are engendering serious environmental changes.
It is Koch brothers David and Charles whose self-titled corporation will be responsible for neutering arctic life.
Carbon Monitoring for Action reports that Koch releases about 200,000 tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide a year, and 24 million metric tons of greenhouse gases a year. The 115 billion dollar corporation is long on the number one carbon-polluting oil deposits in North America: the tar sands of Alberta. And, they have paid $30 million dollars in reparation for 300 oil spills in coastal waters.
Koch has evaded legitimate punishment of these violations, though. They do this by paying fines that hardly nick their margins, such as the $4.5 million they paid to the EPA after violating the Clean Air Act in 2000. Additionally, they dropped $5 million to derail four consumer-protection bills: Federal Price Gouging Prevention Act, the Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act of 2008, the Prevent Unfair Manipulation of Prices Act of 2008 and the Close the Enron Loophole Act.
It is Congressional Republicans who save them from incarceration. Any political candidates who pledge to fight against climate change, Obama and the EPA, seem to immediately gain the Kochs' support. They have played an enormous role in creating today’s GOP, spending $20 million on lobbying Congress in 2008, raising $400 million in the 2012 election, and $100 million to elect Republicans in the 2014 midterms. To help Republicans take back the Senate, they have bought 44,000 political ads since the start of the century.
What is more disturbing is that Congressional Republicans have not failed them. These members have publicly fought against Obama’s environmental plans, spoken out against the movement of climate change with pseudo-science, and in November of 2014, passed three House Bills regarding the Environmental Protestant Agency (EPA) which do not just have the power to damage polar bear genitals, but wipe out the arctic and poison human beings.
First is the Secret Science Reform Act (H.R. 4012), which forbids EPA from depending on environmental studies that involve legally protected data from public disclosure. Characterizing the bill, Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) says that this effort to limit the scope of science undermines scientific integrity.
Second is the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act (H.R. 1422), which helps industry-affiliated scientists obtain spots on the EPA’s Science Advisory Board. In exchange, it’s become increasingly harder for academic scientists to provide their expertise to EPA. This is due to “scientists,” with hidden financial conflicts of interest, desire to skew the proposals and recommendations of the board. This causes for the scientific review process to be dragged out, which in turn gives industries the time they need to stop, derail, and/or delay EPA actions.
Third is the Promoting New Manufacturing Act (4795 H.R.), which permits less protective air quality standards to new facilities. In this condition, selected facilities can release extra pollution. The extra pollution of these facilities, then, imposes costs on areas struggling to clean up their air from existing sources.
“These bills are the culmination of one of the most anti-science and anti-health campaigns I’ve witnessed in my 22 years as a member of Congress,” said Ranking Member Johnson. “As someone who worked in public health before I entered politics, I can think of no mission of the federal government that is more important or noble than EPA’s mission to ‘protect human health and the environment.' I am hopeful that Congress can get past this misguided and disingenuous war on the dedicated scientists and public servants of the EPA, and that we can come together to advance our economy and a cleaner environment and healthier public.”
With over 56% of Congressional Republicans rejecting the existence of climate change—supported by two $40 billion dollar lobbyists—it’s no stretch to say that the bears and their penises are done for.
Without U.S. politicians who can accept objective, scientific research, the human race can say goodbye to the 25,000 polar bears that are left in the world. Because even if the bears migrate to land and eat humans for food, there are several hundred chemicals that could be destroying their genitals—just like PCBs. If we take this chance and ignore scientific speculation, the animals' ability to procreate could soon end.
Next time you cringe watching a video of a polar bear drowning, know that the Koch Industry and Congressional Republicans are happily counting paychecks. If polar bears lose the ability to reproduce with one another, remember that Congress and Koch were fully aware of the substances they were dumping into our oceans. Though we may not legally be able to castrate these criminals, we can still save polar bears and their penises by refusing to vote for Koch-supported, Republican candidates in the upcoming elections.
