For a long time Coca-Cola and climate change shared the Polar Bear as their symbol. But a big white bear stranded on a melting iceberg turned out not to be the best messenger about global warming–-evidently, the polar regions that bear reflected were too remote for the average imagination to relate to.
The disappearance of frogs and the vanishing of honeybees have also served as strong symbols of climate reality. To that distinguished list, James Hansen, the climate scientist who had made public one of the earliest and clearest warnings of global warming and who had left NASA after a decades’ long career to fight climate change, proclaimed the Monarch Butterfly to be climate change’s canary in the proverbial coal mine—the species serving as a harbinger for all in the face of the climate crisis.
Penelope (Penny) Boyer
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