So we decided to rent a movie the other night, and, after much debating and musing, we chose a movie called "An Arctic Tale."

If you haven't heard of this movie before, it follows two different mammals, a baby walrus and a baby polar bear, through the early years of their lives. The movie not only does a good job of portraying the many battles each animal goes through in daily life, but conveys an even stronger, more alarming picture of the additional struggles created by environmental changes.

These changes--over the course of eight years of filming the movie--start subtly, but then become more dramatic towards the end. Warming land and ocean temperature brings the onset of Spring earlier and earlier throughout the movie. This leads to an unanticipated thawing of sea ice, vital to the survival of both the walrus and the polar bear. Watching all of this unfold over the course of an hour-and-a-half not only made me feel sorry for the animals, but frustrated and even guilty.

Let's start with the frustrated part. I felt frustrated because through all of the environmental/"green" stories that I've done I thought to myself, "Hasn't anyone been listening?" Obviously, I quickly came to my senses realizing that these changes didn't happen overnight, but were put in motion decades ago.

That's when the guilt came. From what I know now about the increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it's hard not to believe that you and I and the six-billion others across the world aren't having some kind of impact on all of this.

Believe what you want, but the fact is both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice is disappearing, in most recent years more rapidly than ever. How much of that is due to us is still debatable. Nonetheless, I think what's important to take from this movie is the fragility of our environment. Science has proven that warming of our atmosphere could lead to catastrophic collapses in ecosystems throughout the world.

There is no reversing the damage that's already been done, but as citizens of this world we need to act more like stewards pushing and demanding that things change, change for the better. I strongly recommend checking out this movie for its eye-opening and emotional plot.