Lewis Pugh swims the North Pole

Ted Talk- Lewis Pugh Swims the North Pole
Rating *****

The Ted Talk that I watched was one of the most inspiring things that I have ever witnessed. In it, Lewis Pugh tells his story on how he stood up against climat changed and showed what humans can acheive with enough determination.

The Ted talk began with Lewis explaining that his father is the reason that he wanted to go the arctic. He describes the amount and rate that the ice has been melting up north from each of the times that he had visited. In seeing the negative impact that climat change has on the arcitc and the lack of attention given to this issue by our world's leaders, Lewis decided to take a stand. Lewis Pugh decided that he was going to swim across the north pole, which should be frozen, to show how terrible climate change truly is. The swim was going to be 1 km long in -1.7 degrees celcius weather ( the english channel is 18 degrees celcius). The Ted talk then cuts to footage from the day of the swim. It shows a mother polar bear and her cub, struggling to get across the very thin ice, and it also shows how much water there really is. In the video, Lewis also talks about his trial swim that was only 5 min long and how his fingers were so swolen that he couldn't feel them for a while. It was difficult to bring himself to do it, but Lewis made the very difficult swim, in a regular swim suit, annd 18 min later it was completed. It took 4 years for Lewis to be able to feel his hands again, but he said that he didn't regrett it at all.

As I said earlier, this video was one of the most inspiring things I have ever witnessed. When I saw the footage of the polar bears, knowing that in 20 years they could be extinct, I was almost brough to tears. Seeing Lewis Pugh swimming in -1.7 degrees water just to state a point made me feel like anything was possible. The fact that I was actually able to swim made it feel so much more real. Lewis Pugh was actually wearing no more than a competative swimmer in 25 degrees weather would wear, and when I saw his reaction after the swim, I could see the toll that it had on his body. I believe that climate hange is an enormous problem that is not given enough attention, and I believe that if more people watch this video, they will feel compelled to act on it imediately too.

I would definately recommend this article to everyone because it not only shows how serious the problem of climate change is, it also shows the incredible things that human beings can achieve when they are determined to make a difference.

Pugh.Lewis. Lewis Pugh Swims the North Pole. Ted Talks. Sept 2009. Web. Jan 19, 2013
http://www.ted.com/talks/lewis_pugh_swims_the_north_pole.html