Egg Island Diary,

29 July 1997

It's a sunny, clear and cold day on the North Slope of Alaska. My thoughts are constantly centered on the oil industry since just about everywhere one gazes around here, oil industry infrastructure scars the landscape. My thoughts have often wandered to other issues I've worked on in my nine years with Greenpeace: ozone protection, campaigning against nuclear power, and making the link between chlorinated chemicals in the environment and human health impacts such as breast cancer. I cannot help but be struck by the parallels and similarities that underlie all of these seemingly disparate issues.

In each case, companies knowingly manufacture products that cause harm to human health and the environment. They produce ozone-destroying CFCs or HCFCs, generate a legacy of nuclear waste that will haunt our children for generations, or manufacture chlorinated chemicals that are linked with all manner of health effects in humans and wildlife including cancer, reproductive effects and infertility. In each case, safer alternatives exist, the majority of which are market-ready. They include ozone-safe refrigerators that don't require the use of CFCs or HCFCs, energy efficiency and renewable forms of energy that eliminate the need for nuclear power, and non-chlorinated processes and products that provide the goods and services we've grown accustomed to without generating exquisitely toxic by-products such as dioxin. In all cases, the introduction of safer alternatives is fought tooth and nail by companies who see them as a direct threat to their market share and profit margins. Ironically, it is these very companies who possess the resources, ingenuity and political power needed to bring these safer alternatives to the mainstream market.

It's easy to see from this arctic outpost. BP and Arco are directing a tremendous amount of resources and ingenuity towards exploring for oil in the arctic. It is amazing to think of their plans for subsea piplelines buried in unstable permafrost below the frozen Arctic Ocean, of towing huge mobile drilling rigs great distances, the intricacies of seismic testing for new oil reserves, and plans for dealing with the all-too-likely oil spills in this frozen arctic expanse. I admit to being angry, shocked and at the same time, in awe of these things. The potential for re-directing this breadth of inventiveness towards solar and wind power is staggering. I cannot help but imagine what the world will look like in twenty years when BP and Arco have kicked their deadly addictions to fossil fuels and instead, are turning a profit, providing jobs, and providing us power from the sun and wind. This is not an

unreasonable or impossible vision, especially considering the accomplishments of the human spirit in the last few millenia. This unrestrained optimism is the reason why I continue to do this work.

Signing out from Egg Island,

Melanie