Xena Warrior Princess, AKA Lucy Lawless, is fighting a new kind of battle these days. She's waging war on big oil. Today she's climbing a Shell drill ship oil derrick with Greenpeace to stop Shell from drilling in the arctic.
Lucy and her fellow protestors are sending a live feed to the Greenpeace home page courtesy of solar laptop. They have several days supplies with them. A feed post fourteen minutes ago indicated police climbed up to inquire how long they would be staying, then climbed back down.
Why is drilling for oil in the arctic so environmentally hazardous? Greenpeace staff blogger, Ben Stewart explains:
1. It’s extremely dangerous. The Arctic environment is one of the harshest in the world, and everything you do there is more complicated than anywhere else.
2. Our climate can’t afford it. As the impacts of climate change become more visible and the danger becomes greater, drilling for and burning more fossil fuels is pretty much the last thing we should be doing, especially in somewhere as fragile and untouched as the Arctic.
3. Relief wells are harder to drill. In the case of a blowout – like happened with Deepwater Horizon – a relief well must be drilled, but the arrival of winter ice cuts the drilling season short. This means oil could be left gushing unstopped for up to two years.
4. Oil recovery is near impossible in ice. Standard spill technology like booms become useless in thick ice. According to a senior official at a Canadian firm specializing in oil spill response, “there is really no solution or method today that we’re aware of that can actually recover [spilt] oil from the Arctic.”
Read more of this top ten list.
Would you like to help Lucy Lawless and Greenpeace stop oil drilling in the Arctic? Visit the Greenpeace homepage today for more information. While you're there, check out the live feed from atop the Shell oil derrick.
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