Podcast: Listen to Stephanie Pearson's feature story

WILL STEGER IS LATE for an appointment, and the world's greatest living polar explorer is losing some of his cool in the purgatory of Southern California traffic: "We're lost, dammit!"

Steering his rented Dodge Stratus into a leafy side street in Santa Monica, Steger stops for a route check. His co-pilot, Elizabeth Andre, a 29-year-old former Miss Teenage America turned Outward Bound instructor, is trying to decipher a hand-drawn map, while Theo Ikummaq, a 52-year-old Inuit hunter and guide from the Canadian Arctic, sits quietly in the backseat, paying no heed whatsoever to his new Swiss Army watch as the hands creep toward two o'clock.

Theo is more interested in the hot-pink bougainvillea outside the car window. Where he lives, it's mostly dark this time of year, and he's loving the subtropical sunshine and flora. Just a few minutes ago, as we sped down Highway 1 from Malibu, he pointed to a tangled jungle of palm fronds and joked, "These plants aren't plastic?"

Steger and Andre get reoriented and before long we're inside the Marmalade Cafe for a sit-down with Laurie David, a co-producer of An Inconvenient Truth and wife of Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, and Diane Isaacs, a co-producer of Killing Pablo, a forthcoming film about drug lord Pablo Escobar. Isaacs takes the beverage order while David, smartly dressed in a gray velour jacket, gets down to business.

"You're the first Inuit I've ever met!" she tells Theo. With his close-cropped black hair, khaki pants, and polo shirt, Theo could pass for an Angeleno. The only giveaway is his baggy white anorak.

"It's an honor to meet you, Will," says David, turning to Steger. "How has your work been going?"

In most photographs, Steger is the über-snowman, with his fur-lined hood and mukluks, but in real life he's less intimidating. Wearing Levis and a T-shirt, the 62-year-old is a fit and sinewy five foot nine. He has wavy brown hair that says ex-hippie; his gray-blue eyes flicker between expressions of delighted animation and steely non-emotion.

Steger tells David he's in L.A. to generate buzz about his upcoming Global Warming 101 expedition, a four-month, 1,200-mile journey across Baffin Island, the 195,298-square-mile chunk of Canada's Nunavut Territory that sits between Greenland and Hudson Bay. The trip, which represents the official end of a decade-long semi-retirement for Steger, was slated to begin February 18, with a crew composed of Steger, Andre, Theo, four other American and Inuit crew members, and four sled teams. The plan is to village-hop, shooting interviews with Inuit elders to document how global warming is changing their lives. Steger and company will also spread the word, via satellite, on GlobalWarming101.com, a clearinghouse for global-warming news and information that includes a special educational section for schoolkids.

Isaacs, a world-class triathlete, will join the team at three points along the way. En route, she'll edit the footage into a five-minute teaser, which she's already started promoting to potential partners like Tree Media, the company producing Leonardo DiCaprio's environmental documentary 11th Hour. The $700,000 project is being funded by private donations and four corporate sponsors, but the ultimate goal is to interest studio bigwigs in producing a film that, according to Isaacs, "won't be your typical National Geographic documentary." She's thinking more like An Inconvenient Truth meets YouTube—an entertaining, marketable, wide-release teaching tool set against the rich backdrop of polar life.

But first things first: Steger is in town to meet people, so Isaacs has turned his visit into a five-day endurance event. This morning Steger gave a PowerPoint presentation to the student body at an upscale Episcopalian school in Pacific Palisades. (The takeaway: "Global warming is all you're going to hear about for the rest of your lives." ) Tomorrow, he'll have lunch with Howard Ruby, a real estate magnate and professional photographer who'll join the expedition in March.

Now that David has the gist, she fires a question at Theo: "What are you seeing up in the Arctic?"

"In the last five years, new animals—robins, finches—have come in, and we don't even have names for them," Theo says. "And older folks aren't comfortable to go off the land anymore.... We've lost about one-third of the summer sea ice."

"Polar bears are starving to death," Steger interjects. He fires up his laptop and clicks to a photo of an emaciated furry mass, lying dead on the tundra. "This polar bear was 300 pounds when it died," he says. "It should have been 1,700 pounds."

Bears starve, Steger explains, because melting sea ice can cut off their access to the ocean's rich food supply.

David, who'd been scribbling notes, literally starts waving her arms. "I want to put this image up on my Web site!" she says. "Let's get this image out there! It's shocking. Shocking!"

Business cards are exchanged, hands clasped. "I'm at a loss for words," says David. "That never happens." Everyone stands around in awkward silence until she says, "This is the beginning of a beautiful partnership, I'm sure."