It’s probably not all Graydon Carter’s fault, but he’s a fun one to blame. After discovering that he was a secret environmentalist, Carter deftly combined the world’s favourite eco-hero and an indecently cute baby polar bear in an Annie Liebowitz shot cover for Vanity Fair’s latest wheeze, the annual Green Issue. And so, with a little help from Leonardo DiCaprio, Knut went stratospheric. And so, with a new found love for polar bears the, to quote George W Bush, “global warming folks” had their image. Since then polar bears have been perching perilously on ever decreasing chunks of ice – a sign of a world heating up and hearts melting. And where the magazine shoots and news footage went, book covers followed.
