As a small team of youth ambassadors for Greenpeace's Arctic campaign begin their trek to the North Pole, I'm reminded of the campaign to save the Antarctic (below), which I led on behalf of Greenpeace in the 1980s.
Right now I am in the Russian Arctic as part of a Greenpeace factfinding mission. We are near a town called Pyt'-Yah, in the Khanty-Mansi region of Siberia, which is surrounded by Rosneft oil fields, the largest public oil company in the world. This is the oil producing capital of Russia, a country where oil provides 25% of the national budget, while creating terrible inflation and total dependence on oil markets.
Posted by Christy Ferguson - 24 August 2013
I’m on board the Greenpeace icebreaker Arctic Sunrise, about to cross into an area of the Arctic that Russian authorities don’t want us to see.
By Kumi Naidoo
On Sunday, something incredible happened. I got on my bike. I cycled around Washington, DC and 14,000 people came with me, in over 106 cities, in 36 countries, in every continent around the world. I joined the biggest demonstration ever in defence of the Arctic. And this was just a taste of what our movement can do.
Gazprom may not be as familiar to you as BP or Exxon, but they’re just as capable of making history with a catastrophic oil spill. The Russian oil giant is the first company to start oil production in the Arctic after their failed attempt last year in addition to Shell’s year of drilling mishaps.
Blogpost by Ben Ayliffe
In a recent news item on the BBC, Artur Akopov, chief of operations on the Prirazlomnaya, made a number of absurd claims about the safety of the peaceful Greenpeace action on the side of Gazprom’s giant oil platform. In a subsequent report, the company also made some peculiar comments on its ability to successfully clean up an oil spill in the freezing waters of the Arctic.
Russia’s overreaction to the Greenpeace Arctic protest — and their ludicrous waffling on the actual charges — will not work out well for Russia. Their extraordinary response will more likely help the global climate movement meet its goals .