On the other side of the world is an environmental disaster waiting to happen but you’ve probably heard of it. A series of toxic tar sands oil pipelines are set to be built throughout North America - that’s unless the community manages to stand in their way.
You may have seen the news recently that Justin Trudeau has gone hell for leather and committed to a bail-out for the controversial Trans Mountain Expansion Project – a tar sands pipeline due to be built in Canada.
When a drilling rig leased by BP exploded 40 miles off the Louisiana coastline, eleven workers lost their lives and pipes deep under the surface of seafloor ruptured. Oil gushed for three months into the Gulf of Mexico, and millions of barrels of oil polluted thousands of miles of marine ecosystems, devastating local communities.
Yesterday, the people of South Australia came together to send a clear message to Norwegian Big Oil company, Statoil: They are not welcome in the Great Australian Bight.
I first moved to Australia from a landlocked country when I was 13. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by what felt like endless oceans. The ocean was intimidating, powerful and incredibly beautiful. It completely enchanted me.
Now, I’m a photographer specialising in the oceans, and the Great Australian Bight is our wild, uncompromising, underwater backyard.
As people and governments around the world are starting to act on climate change, the Norwegian government is moving in the opposite direction – opening up the remote Arctic for new oil drilling and putting people’s lives at risk.
After perpetrating what is probably the worst oil-related catastrophe on Earth - a 20,000 hectare death zone in Ecuador, known as the “Amazon Chernobyl” - the Chevron Corporation has spent two decades and over a billion dollars trying to avoid responsibility. In 2011, Indigenous and peasant villagers won an $9.5-billion compensation judgement in Ecuador. Chevron, despite accepting jurisdiction in Ecuador to avoid a US jury trial, refused to pay.
BP and Total have suffered a massive setback in their plans to drill for oil near the Amazon Reef. The companies’ joint application for a drilling permit is in crisis, after the Brazilian government rejected their environmental impact study.
