Egg Island Diary,

Sunday, August 17

We have ended our stay on Egg Island. Ingrid spent the last night there on Thursday and Woody went out on Friday morning to help her pack up the tents, kitchen, communication gear and everything else. We have been splitting our nights between the island and the ship during the last week, rotating with ship's crew members eager to staff our camp, but it finally became clear that the level of activity on board the Arctic Sunrise required us to end our occupation of the Arctic Base Camp. We're all a little sad to leave the beauty and quiet of Egg Island, but our stay was wonderful and very helpful to our efforts to monitor the activities of the oil industry here in the Arctic. We are fortunate to be the ones selected for this work, and for all we have seen here on the Beaufort Sea coast.

As our camp came to an end, we have all had to assess our responsibilities to decide how long we will each stay here in the north. Yesterday Ingrid, Jack and Doug departed the high Arctic. Ingrid and Jack go south to work with Greenpeace's fisheries campaign in Seattle, while Doug must return to New Zealand and his work there. The Arctic Base Camp drew us all together for 27 days, and now we will direct our energy toward other pressing issues. Liz, Melanie, Woody and I will stay with the ship and help with the climate campaign work as it moves offshore into the Arctic Ocean.

Our decision to leave Egg has been proven correct in the two days since we pulled our camp onto the ship. The day we left, federal marshalls came on board the Arctic Sunrise to serve us all with a lawsuit brought by ARCO to keep us away from their vessel and operations. They are suing us for money damages (perhaps the only thing they think has any value), claiming among other things that we rammed their 150,000-ton steel and concrete drill platform with our rubber boats. Hmm. Although they will not say exactly how they have been damaged, we suspect their suit is intended to intimidate us and prevent us from speaking out publically about their reckless endangerment of the Arctic Ocean and its community of life. But we will not be bullied into leaving. Our actions have been peaceful and thoughtful, seeking only to bear witness to the actions of ARCO and permit the public to see what they intend to do here in this fragile northern ecosystem.

In addition to protecting the Arctic ecosystem we are here working to prevent these gigantic corporations from running roughshod over the laws of this country, which they are doing through their refusal to obtain the safety and environmental permits required for pursuing their oil development program. They seem to realize that they cannot comply with the law and operate their drilling at the same time, so they have decided to ignore the law. Yet even if they could comply with the law their actions violate a higher law, the law of common sense which states they must turn away from their climate destroying course of action and seek a more gentle energy path for sustaining our society.

The oil companies have enlisted the help of the governments of the United States and Alaska, via the courts and the police, to further their attempts to avoid America's environmental laws. Without addressing ARCO's failure to obey laws which protect marine mammals and the ocean ecosystem, the courts have directed the Coast Guard to establish a zone around the ARCO drill platform and forbid entry by Greenpeace upon pain of severe punishment, including serious fines and imprisonment. Coast Guard personnel are on board the mobile drill platform and are using the boats and helicopter facilities of the oil industry to protect the industry from any approach by the public.

Because of this abridgement of our right to express our opinions and because of the government's failure to enforce the law, the Arctic Sunrise has been forced to place the Glomar Beaufort Sea I under citizen's arrest. Today our campaign director, Steve, and the skipper of the Arctic Sunrise, Arne, informed the manager of the drill platform and the Coast Guard on-site commander aboard the platform that the rig was under arrest for violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Coastal Zone Management Act. Because we're prevented from approaching the platform, Steve called upon the directors of the federal agencies which administer these acts, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Environmental Protection Agency, to direct the Coast Guard to take the drill rig into custody until the violations of the law can be addressed by the court system.

Unfortunately, the drill rig has disregarded our arrest and the Coast Guard has chosen not to respond to our plea for help, passing the buck by saying they must be instructed to do so by a federal agency. The drill rig is steaming toward the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where it intends to drill the first of a vast complex of offshore wells that will certainly devastate the marine ecosystem of the eastern Arctic Ocean, as well as global climate. We're alone out here, with no one but us to prevent the drill platform from moving into position on the seabed. But we know that concerned citizens in Alaska and throughout the world support this effort to stop the drilling, and this knowledge helps us to keep our hopes high that ARCO and the other oil giants can be stopped before their exploration programs destroy these last wild places and the flood of oil ignites a conflagration that will send our global climate heating out of control.

Egg Island camp may be gone, but we're still working toward the essential shift to alternative energy sources. Today this work is in the Beaufort Sea on the Arctic Ocean. Tomorrow it will be on the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Where will it be next week, next month, next year? It will be in all of our homes, schools, businesses, towns and nations. Where else?

Stop oil, Go Solar! Save the Climate!

If we all get busy and do what we can, maybe the we won't need to come back to the Egg Island again next year.

Tom
Aboard the M/V Arctic Sunrise
Beaufort Sea, Alaska