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International Executive Director of Greenpeace, Kumi Naidoo, is being deported from Greenland after four days in jail for scaling a Cairn Energy rig off the coast of Greenland and demanding that Cairn immediately halt drilling operations and leave the Arctic.
Cairn used water cannons to fire at Naidoo and his fellow activists as they climbed the ladder on one of the rig’s legs. Naidoo made it to the platform nonetheless, presenting rig operators with 50,000 petition signatures from people around the world who demand that Cairn publish their oil spill response plan. Leaked documents say that the UK government believes that freezing Arctic temperatures would make a spill “near impossible” to clean up.
Naidoo was a youth leader in the anti-apartheid movement who was arrested and forced to flee to the UK and live in exile. He calls the campaign to stop Arctic oil drilling “one of the defining environmental battles of our age.”
“While this struggle to prevent the destruction of the Arctic might appear remote, it is fundamental for all of humanity” says Naidoo. “It is global warming that has threatened the livelihoods of millions and the melting of the Arctic ice cap leads to sea level rise around the world. Therefore it is important that we get our leaders to stop recklessly chasing the last drops of oil that exist at the expense of pursuing better alternatives.”
According to Greenpeace, Exxon and Chevron are watching what happens to the Cairn rig with interest. They have already bought up Greenland licenses, and if Cairn strikes oil this summer, the Arctic oil rush will be on:
Even without an accident Cairn admits its drilling operation will result in at least 9,000 tonnes of chemicals being discharged directly into the waters of the Davis Strait – including 180 tonnes of red-listed chemicals (more than all annual oil drilling operations in Norway and Denmark combined). The company admits that it would take decades before significant profits from oil exploration flow to Greenland, while Cairn’s operations pose a grave threat to Greenland’s fisheries, which represent 88% of the island’s export economy.
Naidoo will be flown to Copenhagen, where he will be held in prison for the night before being taken to Amsterdam and released.
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go green Peace
I wish I’d moved to Amsterdam when I had the chance, right around the time of Reagan!
I say we get a boat for Michael Whitney.
http://uberhumor.com/i-have-had-a-horribly-busy-day/
FWIW, I’ve always supported Greenpeace. I don’t agree with all that they do, but they’re out there and doing it, which is more than can be said for many of us (esp in such a bold fashion).
Thanks for the update on this important action. Good to keep up with these events, as we’re unlikely to hear about it almost anywhere else.
who is M.Whitney?
if the euro folds,ill be gone
Ineffective showboating. Greenpeace donors, if they care about actually effecting change, should be incensed.
one of the final nails in the coffin of the earth is drilling in the Arctic. I despise those people.
many thanks, and good luck to those people. Greenpeace stopped above ground testing. so, they have a chance.
Wrong. Effective action that gets media attention and moves the “he said..she said…” media window in the right direction.
Glad to see Greenpeace has figured out that attending the right cocktail parties isn’t working and growing some. Paul Watson’s been doing it for decades. After GP drummed him out of the corps for not being “nice.”
Have you seen the poll data on the decline in support for action on global warming? The stupid is winning.
F**c “nice.” We’re losing by being “nice.” “Nice” sucks. And, finally, worst of all, Peggy Noonan is “nice.”
You can add Shell oil to the list. Here in Alaska, they are planning very large offshore development in the Chukchi Sea. BP is very capable of moving stuff to where the oil profits are, too.
Not one single cleanup plan for the Arctic would work, even on the nicest day of late August or early September. For them to even come close to working, an entire fleet of icebreaking boats and ships would have to be created that nobody intends to build. Ever.
But drilling is safe, the President said so. He’s willing to have our kids die for oil hegemony, so the wars must be legitimate. Also, that nuclear mess over there in Japan has made him awfully grumpy, it seems to have set back his plans to give away lots of money to the energy companies. And those green-peace activists are so pushy. They give us progressives such a bad image. Don’t you think they should just sit down, withhold judgement, and defer to our wonderful Commander in Chief to make the world a
better placemore profitible garbage heap?/s
Effective action that gets media attention and moves the “he said..she said…” media window in the right direction.
Yeah, all 17 articles in Google News. Whooptiy-doo, there’s some change you can believe in. Sorry. But petitions and stunts don’t do anything effective and you’re not going to move any windows in the corporate media with stunts and petitions. These things are easily ignored and they ARE ignored. Worse, the signing of a petition is a psychological disincentive for the signer to take further action.
Seriously, how does a petition and a stunt make for any effective action, how does this ephemeral notion of “window moving” work, with isolated and easily ignored (by the media) showboating of this sort? Surely you can present some actual factual data, if it’s so effective?
And before this you’ve seen Greenpeace or Arctic drilling in the news, where?
If you could afford it, it’s a lovely, convenient place to live, and less conservative than much of the rest of Holland. You have to have, however, a mindset that thinks English weather would be a pleasant break.
A point that bears repeating: spill plans, and there are always spills, are a fig leaf, they are no more credible than the “immediate” response to the Gulf spill. It still remains to be dealt with; even in hurricane season, the weather there more easily supports recovery efforts. There is nothing colder than cold steel on a cold sea, nothing.
Jane,
Thanks for the post. Discourse is needed. Keep the media focus on the situation and the causation.
Full disclosure: I have insider information related to this situation.
Stereotyping and slanting news coverage is not the exclusive province of the right wing media. Not unlike all environmentalists and all fire pups, all members of the deepwater oil exploration community are not assholes.
Unfortunately, in all heretofore mentioned categories, some are.
Okay, I waited long enough for this to get off the front page. And I hope you go back and read the comments to see this… I love you Jane. If I wasn’t happily married I would probably be stalking you, (figure of speech-gentlemen, and I include myself, do not stalk women) because intelligent, articulate, committed women who can think are rare and worth everything. I know because I found one of the rare few. So it bothers me when you are snookered by sensationalist manipulation. You inspire not only me but thousands of other concerned people who turn to your website for unvarnished information. You are the voice of reason crying in a wasteland of media propaganda and noise and your credibility is priceless. As you know the right wing media would enjoy nothing more that to point out factual errors in your reporting, over and over and over…Howard Dean’s scream…Don’t let anyone play you! There was no one aiming water cannons at the Greenpeace people who climbed the ladder on the Leiv Eiriksson. They were probably as curious as I am as to why Greenpeace decided to climb the ladder under the salt water service line overflow when it was zero degrees Fahrenheit with the wind blowing.
I agree that the Arctic drilling issue is important. It’s so important the facts must be separated from stagecraft. Even when the stagecraft is used for good, propaganda is still propaganda. The Greenpeace video is sensationalist, deliberately skewed to make the activists look like they are risking their lives for the common good, when they are not. Riding around in a Zodiac in the Arctic is hazardous enough. Why stage the video to make it look like bad oil men on the rig were trying to wash brave petition bearing Kumi off the ladder causing him to fall to his death? Why didn’t Kumi climb one of the other ladders? Why didn’t he deliver the petition to the Cairn office in Edinburgh? Why didn’t he help Greenland’s native environmentalists petition their own government agency for a copy of the Spill Response Plan that the BMP had to approve before Cairn received permission to drill offshore in Greenland waters? My guess is that it isn’t sensationalist enough and it would show that the people he is opposing are humans, just like him.
The Greenpeace Environmental Super Heroes aren’t the only ones who wear bright orange survival suits in the Arctic. Everyone on the Leiv Eiriksson and every other Arctic rig wears the same bright orange winter gear when they are outside the accommodation block, for the same reason. It is easy to spot, enhancing the visibility of everyone out on the deck of an oil rig, a supply boat or in a Greenpeace Zodiac. It is used for protection and preservation purposes, making a man easy to spot whether he inadvertently walks under a moving crane load, or God forbid, falls into the sea.
Look at the video footage closely. Even in the distance shots, the men climbing the ladder are easy to see. Where are the men on the deck aiming “water cannons” at the environmental activists? Why is no one outside pointing at the intruders? Why is there no PA announcement warning the rig personnel of a security breach(Standard Operating Procedure on oil rigs since the 911 attacks). Greenpeace cameramen have audio recorders on their cameras, or we couldn’t hear Kumi speaking. The activist daredevils are staging the shoot, risking their lives climbing emergency escape ladders that are spaced with horizontal comfort areas for resting to make the strenuous eighty foot climb easy. Did Greenpeace scout the rig and plan to board the rig on the only escape ladder that happened to be under a box girder tank overflow at the time? It sure looks to me like there is no one at the top of the water cascade directing the flow, and the spray conveniently does not follow the lead man on the ladder when he reaches a horizontal walkway. I can assure you that the fire hoses and water cannons on the rigs would most assuredly have washed all of them off the ladder.
The Arctic will be saved when 750,000 people in LA stop commuting 50 miles twice daily, all by themselves in bumper to bumper traffic in their individual combustion engine driven motor conveyances, listening to talk radio.
We’re not all assholes!
I love your response to Jane, because I’ve got some blue-collar perspectives on things as well, but:
I think this is a We Support The Troops kinda thing. It is hardly the front-line individuals whose behavior is reprehensible in this Arctic drilling scene, but, rather, the (money-driven politics) focusing humanity’s energy needs on this relatively dangerous means of meeting the needs.