Greenpeace Brings Arctic Plight Into Focus With Poignant Ad

Last month in Cannes, during the annual congregation of people from the Advertising world, former President Bill Clinton had appealed to them  to use their powers and extent of communication to bring awareness of world’s problems to the people and help ignite debate and discussions and assist in finding solutions. He would certainly be proud of the new Greenpeace advertisement that draws awareness to the importance of saving the Arctic. The Greenpeace video from Partizan would certainly be something up his street.

The ad highlights the plight of polar bears in the face of global warming; a topic the former president had specifically touched upon.

The spot, named “A Homeless Polar Bear in London” shows a polar bear lost in the city, driven out of its Arctic habitat, owing to global warming, roaming in a meaningless way, nosing around decaying smog-choked London, amidst ugly garbage, strewn carelessly, a reminder of the rampant consumerism that has invaded our lives. There is a delightful scene when seeing carbon monoxide and other gases escaping from the exhaust pipe from the rear of a car, the polar bear sniffs to investigate and turns away in disgust.

The narrator, actor Jude Law says, “As the Arctic melts, the rush to exploit its resources is starting. Nobody will listen to her,” he says, as we see the bear slump down near a pile of garbage under a tree. “But they’ll listen to you. Join the movement. Save the Arctic.”

In the last three decades, the world has lost almost 75 percent of its floating ice cover. Scientist are saying that it is disappearing rapidly and calling it a ‘death spiral.’ For more than 800,000 years it has been there and now it is in danger for vanishing altogether, spelling immediate doom for its  animals like the seals, the polar bear and the walruses and also for the rest of us.

Visually the ad is very impressive indeed and it’s hard to take your eyes off it. The bear meshes well with the background and the scenes are appropriately depressing. Some may feel it is over sentimentalizing the issue but it sends out its message loud and clear. The haunting soundtrack set to the Radiohead’s Kid A track, ‘Everything In Its Right Place’ adds to the melancholy milieu.

The oil company is especially targeted in this video, as the bear in its meandering stumbles into a Shell gas station and sniffs the gas pump miserably.

Both Law and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke have released statements about the spot. Law says: “As the Arctic sea ice melts, polar bears are being forced to go far beyond their normal habitat to find food and look after their young. This film is a powerful expression of how our fates are intertwined, because climate change is affecting all of us no matter where we live. Right now a handful of oil companies are trying to carve up the Arctic for the sake of the next quarterly results but a global movement is growing to stop them. I stand with hundreds of thousands of others who think the area should be made into a sanctuary, protected from corporate greed for good.”

Yorke adds: “An oil spill in the Arctic would devastate this region of breathtaking beauty, while burning that oil will only add to the biggest problem we all face, climate change. That’s why I’m backing this campaign.”

The last scene, literally leaves you misty eyed, as helpless against the changing times, and resigned to its doom, the bear collapses next to a tree, with a vacant faraway look in its eyes, contemplating its fate.