Back in 2005, movie goers were enthralled by The March of the Penguins, a French documentary that followed Antarctica’s emperor penguins as they marched determinedly back and forth across increasingly widening ice fields [up to 60 to 70 miles] in order to breed and raise their next generation.
Just last week, those same awe-inspiring avians received endangered species status on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. IUCN reported that, “Climate change in Antarctica is leading to changes in sea ice that are projected to cause the emperor penguin population to halve by the 2080s.”
According to the organization’s news release,” satellite images indicate a loss of around 10% of the population between 2009 and 2018 alone, equating to more than 20,000 adult penguins.”
Dr. Philip Trathan, member of the IUCN SSC Penguin Specialist Group who worked on the emperor penguin Red List assessment, reported, “After careful consideration of different possible threats, we concluded that human-induced climate change poses the most significant threat to emperor penguins. Early sea ice break-up in spring is already affecting colonies around the Antarctic, and further changes in sea ice will continue to affect their breeding, feeding and molting habitat. Emperor penguins are a sentinel species that tell us about our changing world and how well we are controlling greenhouse gas emissions that lead to climate change.”
• too stupid to believe scientific climate data;
• too committed to political cults to entertain information contrary to their creeds;
• too busy raking in profits from the fossil fuel industry that saw March register “its most abnormally hot month in 132 years of records,” according to AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein, citing federal weather data;
• or just too lazy to change their precious habits [such as leaving empty vehicles running in parking lots] to accommodate other creatures with whom we share this [only] one wonderful planet that the astronauts reminded us of earlier in the month.
Borenstein’s assessment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data continued: “Not only was it the hottest March on record for the U.S., but the amount it was above normal beat any other month in history for the Lower 48 states. March’s average temperature of 50.85 degrees Fahrenheit was 9.35 F above the 20th-century normal for March. That easily passed the old record of 8.9 F set in March 2012 as the most abnormally hot month on record.”
[But take heart, MAGAt faithful who favor dogma over data. Your self-anointed Pope Savior just declared that the planet is cooling. You can embrace that lie along with his others.]
Our record hot March reflects findings released that month by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization. The WMO reported record heat levels in 2025, with the 11 hottest years falling between 2015 and 2025.
France 24 cited the WMO conclusion that “the consequences of such warming feared to last for thousands of years.”
Such documented warming has consequences. Joining the emperor penguins on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species were Antarctic fur seals, the IUCN report noting that “reduced food availability has already driven a 50% reduction in the Antarctic fur seal population since 2000.”
The fur seal situation is so dire that its status jumped from least concern past conservation dependent, near threatened, then vulnerable to its more precarious endangered ranking. Above endangered are critically endangered, extinct in the wild and extinct.
“Humanity has just endured the 11 hottest years on record,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “When history repeats itself 11 times, it is no longer a coincidence. It is a call to act.”
Kara Joy McKee, chapter director of the Oklahoma Sierra Club observed: “As our insurance premiums rise and we pay the price for worsening weather disasters like historic droughts, fires and floods, SB 1439 effectively closes the courthouse doors to Oklahoma taxpayers and gives giant energy corporations a free pass.”
Martin Harper, CEO of BirdLife International, which coordinated the emperor penguin assessment as the authority for birds on the IUCN Red List, called the penguin’s deteriorating situation “a stark warning: climate change is accelerating the extinction crisis before our eyes. Governments must act now to urgently decarbonize our economies.”
And Big Oil’s best buddy, U.S. President Donald Trump acted by agreeing to pay TotalEnergies, a French company, about $928 million to forfeit leases to build wind farms in the eastern U.S., according to a March story in the New York Times. Instead, Brad Reed of Common Dreams reports, the company will “invest the money it received from the Trump administration into oil and gas projects in the U.S.”
Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, posted this response: “$1 billion of our tax dollars to kill a clean energy program that creates jobs, just so Trump’s Big Oil donors can make more profit. The most corrupt presidency ever – and it’s not even close.”
We have a few stuffed dodo birds and passenger pigeons to remind us of past human depredations against the natural world. Future generations – if people survive the frying pan we are creating – will have a fine movie to remind them that anti-science indifference and greed might not provide the proper blueprint for true prosperity.
