Beatles star attempts to save the polar bear

Sir Paul McCartney, Penelope Cruz and Robert Redford are among the stars backing a new campaign to protect the Arctic from oil drilling and unsustainable fishing.

Greenpeace are calling for ministers at the Rio+20 climate change talks to pass a UN resolution to create a sanctuary around the North Pole and ban further exploration of the wider Arctic.

The area is being increasingly encroached by humans as temperatures continue to rise and ice caps melt.

Native people say their traditional way of life is under threat as large scale oil companies have already started drilling at offshore sites across the Arctic.

Greenpeace say the Arctic belongs to the whole world because it is defined in international law as the high seas. They say the future of the polar bear depends on the Arctic being preserved, and the earth's temperature being stabilised. Paul McCartney said it was crucial for governments to take action before it was too late:

Russia, Canada, the US, Norway and Denmark are each making territorial claims on the seabed to allow oil companies in.

Greenpeace are calling for a ban on offshore oil drilling as they say drilling is damaging the region's already fragile ecosystems and threatening the survival of the four million indigenous people who live there, as well as the native animals such as the polar bear.

The former Beatles star said it was "madness" to search for oil in the Arctic, and that the Rio+20 conference was the time to "take a stand."

Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson is also backing the bid to make the uninhabited area around the North Pole off limits to oil drilling and unsustainable fishing. His name and that of hundreds of thousands others are are being written on an "Arctic scroll" petition which Greenpeace hopes to get signed by one million people.

The petition will then be planted on an Arctic seabed, 2.5 miles (4km) below the ice and marked by a "flag for the future".