Short story by Jeanette Winterson

In December world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to try to reach a global deal to tackle climate change. To support the launch of the 10:10 campaign to reduce carbon emissions, the Review asked some of our greatest artists, authors and poets to produce new work in response to the crisis




I am your inner polar bear. Find me before it's too late.

There's a photograph of me rafting an iceberg, the melted sea all around, the sea that should have been solid.

I was thinking about the end of Frankenstein - do you remember? The monster has fled to the icy wastes because he can find no home; the thing that he is has no place, and when something has no place, first it does a lot of damage and then it dies. The monster curses Frankenstein for creating him without a world where he can live - then as the waters break around the ice-bound ship, the monster leaps from Frankenstein's cabin and is borne away on an ice-raft into the unending night.

I am thinking about the end of the world - not because I am religious, but because I am a polar bear, and the world will end for me faster than it will for you, and you'll put some of me in zoos and special chill nature reserves, but what you will really be excited about is oil and trade and who controls the North West Passage.

And I will be a monster because only monsters have no home.

When you take my world away from me I'm going to come and live with you. All your civilised and all your science will be on the outside, along with all your trade and aid. Inside, there will be me. Your inner polar bear - the wild free place white pristine - sun dropped red behind my head head back jaw open swallowing pounds and pounds of fresh killed life raw clean cold. The dive of me the weight of me.

I will be everything you have lost. I will be everything you neglected. I will be everything you forgot. I will be the wild place sold for money.

You see, when I lived far away, you knew I was there, and I kept something for you, even though you had never seen a polar bear or an ice floe. Even though you are not adapted to my conditions. I kept your wild, cold, raw. And the lion keeps something for you, and the mangrove swamp and the coral and the spider and the wren.

You think I am a stupid polar bear? Go up into space and look back at this diamond cut planet, polar capped, white whirled. It is one planet, one place, and there is nothing else like it anywhere in the solar system. When you see it whole, you remember that it's not polar bears over there, and snakes over here; it's one place, one strange special place. It comes as a whole or not at all.





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