Which among the following is the most crucial message conveyed by the above passage?
Answer & explanation
Answer: (d) Climate change poses a threat to the survival of polar bears.
Summer sea ice in the Arctic is melting earlier and faster and has shrunk by about 30 per cent, and this threatens the food web topped by polar bears. The crucial message is that a warming Arctic endangers polar bears.
- ✗ (a) The passage says the period of summer melt is lengthening, not that summer has become short; temperatures are not mentioned.
- ✗ (b) Moving polar bears elsewhere is an outside idea; the passage offers no remedy.
- ✗ (c) This reverses the passage: the food web is threatened by ice loss, and polar bears stand at its top. Their absence is not said to destroy the food chains.
- ✓ (d) Earlier, faster melting (a climate-change signal) undermines the food web 'atop which stand polar bears', so their survival is at risk.
Remember · Crucial message = the passage's main consequence. Watch for options that flip cause and effect or bring in remedies the passage never mentions.
Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper II (2017, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). ·