|
|
|
Greenpeace
is an independent campaigning organisation that uses non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems and to force solutions which are essential to a green and peaceful future.
|
|
Bearing witness
« Continued from previous
page
We arrived on February 28 in the dark. The landing strip was easy to
make, but the place was delayed by bad weather. It was always "coming
the next day" but it turned out to be 15 days before it landed!
Camping in the Arctic is extreme camping, I've never done anything quite
like it. But for such a long period in the tents - it was -50º outside
- you're always losing, slowly losing, getting colder, more and more
miserable.
Finally the cargo plane arrived. But the airstrip was so lumpy that,
although the pilot was supposed to come back twice, he got scared and
never returned. In the end we had to bring out 80% of the equipment
with snowmobiles and sledges; we did about ten strips.
Six miles offshore BP had cut a big hole in the sea ice and was dumping
gravel into this hole - trucks and trucks of gravel to create an artificial
island for the oil rigs. It's hard to imagine the sight. Turn one way
and all you see is Arctic, ice, sky - it's endless. Then turn 180º,
and it's scary. The power, the size of these developments, the amount
of money and gear.
But the hardest, the most frustrating thing was that we couldn't physically
stop Northstar. We were such a small operation, eight of us with a couple
of snowmobiles and sledges. BP is spending about $700m - trucks, bulldozers,
me. If it put $700m into solar panels it could make them very cheap.
All we could do was put ourselves in front of trucks to stop them, tie
ourselves to bulldozers, climb on top of digging equipment and put banners
up. But these actions were always short-lived; security and police were
right on top of you, it was so heavily guarded and well-lit at night.
The police were there to neutralize us as much as possible. As soon
as you stepped over the line just one bit, they'd arrest you. So they
arrested three of us. I was away in Anchorage for two weeks, but the
judge basically said it was silly and allowed me to go back. The police
were pretty upset to see me again after two weeks. BP employees vandalised
our gear, but when we complained the police never came out to look."
<<Back
|
"We had some interesting contact with
Inuit people there. Two parties came out to support what we were
doing. They see BP as a threat to their traditional, sustainable
hunting of whales. They spent the night, and had dinner with us.
They are great people."
"Camping
in the Arctic is extreme camping, I've never done anything quite
like it. The whole concept of the Sirius Arctic camp was extraordinary.
It was a technological and logistical challenge," Henk Haazen.
|
|
|
|
