One day Arctic sea ice may be a thing of the past in summer. A distant memory of what used to be. And something our grandchildren will look at with awe in the natural history books.
Today is the day. The very first barrels of Arctic oil have found their way to my home country. Gazprom, Russia’s biggest energy company, has shipped the first tanker with crude oil from the Arctic to the Rotterdam harbor, the Netherlands.
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 .
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.
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.
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.
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.