I’m sitting in a coffee shop around the corner from my home in Madison, Wisconsin. It’s a typically grey winter’s day. Even though it’s the second week of February, it’s about 35 degrees and it’s threatening to rain.  outside four months worth of snow is melting before my eyes.

It’s been a bitterly cold winter. Last week it was 5 below. So I can’t really say that I’m all that disappointed to see all this ice wash down the storm drains. Yesterday was bright and sunny. Spring looks like it’ll come early after fall. But even as I make plans for warm weather fun the weeks to come, I can’t help but think about the broader issue of climate change.

Ice isn’t just melting here. Much further north massive sheets of frozen seawater are receding off the continental shelf of the Arctic. Year after year vast plains of ice that pack and extend the shoreline of the North Pole are getting smaller and smaller. And as this shore-fast ice continues to shrink so does the habitat of the world’s polar bear population.

At the top of the food chain in the frozen north the polar bear is a keystone species, a bellwether of emerging trends in the future of our planet. Should this great predator disappear with it will have gone dozens of other species from the arctic fox to microscopic zooplankton. As shore-fast ice in the Arctic recedes the survival of the polar bear is at great risk. But it also means for human populations thousands of miles to the south a major increase of sea levels and a big up-tick in patterns of catastrophic weather throughout the planet.

Wildlife photographer Steven Kazlowski has devoted the last 10 years of his life to photographing this charismatic animal as the landscape of its habitat dramatically changes. In his new book “The Last Polar Bear” Kazlowski gives us an intimate look into a part of the world we may never see, but is intrinsically linked to our survival.