Arctic Explorers Kick Off Coke's Polar Bear Campaign At Shedd Aquarium

Two Arctic explorers joined executives from the Niles Coca-Cola bottling plant Monday to rally support for an international campaign to save polar bears.

The event, held at Shedd Aquarium's dolphin pool, helped launch Coke's "Arctic Home" partnership with the World Wildlife Federation to conserve polar bear habitat.

Coca Cola is donating $2 million, and has brought out limited-edition cans to encourage consumers to make $1 donations. It will match them, up to an additional $1 million. Both the white and red version of the cans, which feature a mother polar bear and two cubs, are made at the Niles facility.

Earlier:

Monday's event was one of seven, held in different U.S. cities, to raise awareness of the campaign and the plight of the polar bears, said David Katz, Niles-based senior vice president of Coca Cola for the Midwest. 

"It's our attempt to bring a global program local," he said. "It's a pretty compelling story."

Ice melting under polar bears' paws

The Arctic explorers testified they've seen the ice polar bears live on melting away over the last few years.

"I'm a 21-year Alaska veteran, and over this time I've seen a lot of change in the Arctic," said the WWF's Geoff York, who spent many years in the field as a polar bear biologist.

Sea ice is disappearing almost from under polar bears' feet, said York, now senior programs officer in Arctic species conservation, adding the Coca Cola-WWF partnership aims to preserve what biologists call the Last Ice Area, a core section of the Arctic.

"The warming Arctic has global impact," he warned. "The loss of that protective snow and ice cover means the whole world gets warmer."

Not possible to reach North Pole by land anymore

Will Steger, a celebrated polar explorer who has covered an estimated 50,000 miles by dogsled and kayak, agreed.

In introducing Steger, Don Shelby, an environmentalist and former news anchor for WCCO TV in Minneapolis, called him "the greatest living explorer." Shelby explained the National Geographic Society gave its prestigious John Oliver La Gorce medal to Steger, ranking him in the company of the four others who have received it: Amelia Earhart, Robert Peary, Roald Amundsen and Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

Steger has led a 1,600 mile traverse of Greenland and a 3,471 mile trip across Antarctica, among other notable achievements, according to willstegerfoundation.org.

"The environment is changing very quickly," Steger told the audience. "I'm an eyewitness to this. You can now no longer travel to the North Pole by dog team unless you have some form of flotation.

"These changes are really profound."

White Coke cans

To conserve polar bears' Arctic habitat, Coca-Cola is encouraging individuals to donate $1 at ArcticHome.com. The company will match donations that are made with a package code, up to $1 million, through March 15. That's in addition to its corporate $2 million donation.

"We're trying to use our voice to help causes that are scientifically founded and important," said Celeste Bottorf, vice president of Coca Cola's Living Well division.

The awareness-raising cans, in white with a mother polar bear and two cubs in silver, have been in stores since November. The red-background version arrived in stores in early December. Some representatives from those stores, including , and , attended the event, along with legislators and environmental activists.

The event also included a screening of a brief segment of the IMAX film "To the Arctic 3D" from Warner Brothers Pictures/MacGillivray Freeman Films/IMAX Corp. It will be released next fall.

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