Paddle in Seattle: Protest against Shell Arctic drilling

Activists opposed to drilling for oil in the Arctic play a kayak flotilla protest on Seattle's Elliott Bay on Saturday.

Activists opposed to drilling for oil in the Arctic plan to launch a flotilla of kayaks and other boats on Seattle's Elliott Bay on Saturday, two days after the arrival of a towering oil rig that is the centerpiece of Shell's Arctic drilling fleet.

The "Paddle in Seattle" — a daylong, family friendly festival in a West Seattle park and an on-the-water protest by "Shell No" kayaktivists — aims to continue the message sent as the Polar Pioneer drilling rig arrived: "Stand up for the climate and say no to Shell's drilling plans."

"This weekend is another opportunity for the people to demand that their voices be heard," Alli Harvey, Alaska representative for the Sierra Club's Our Wild America campaign, said in a statement Friday. "Science is as clear as day when it comes to drilling in the Arctic: the only safe place for these dirty fuels is in the ground."

The gathering, hosted by a coalition of groups, is expected to draw thousands both on land and in the water. At the center of the paddle protest will be the "People's Platform," a 4,000-square-foot barge powered by renewable energy, said Jonathon Berman with the Sierra Club.

Just a quarter-mile away from the Seacrest Marine Park sits the 400-foot long, 300-foot tall Polar Pioneer, the first of two oil drilling rigs that Royal Dutch Shell plans to use this summer as it explores for oil off Alaska's northern coast. The second rig, the Noble Discoverer, arrived at the Port of Everett last week and is slated join the Polar Pioneer at the Port of Seattle's Terminal 5 at a later date. Everett port spokeswoman Lisa Lefeber said on Friday that they expect the Noble Discoverer to be there for two to three weeks.

The Arctic holds about 30 percent of the world's undiscovered natural gas and 13 percent of its oil, according to Shell's website.

"This amounts to around 400 billion barrels of oil equivalent, 10 times the total oil and gas produced in the North Sea to date," Shell's site says. "Developing Arctic resources could be essential to securing energy supplies for the future, but it will mean balancing economic, environmental and social challenges."

The activists see it differently, however.

The protesters say it's critical that they take a stand "against dirty fossil fuel projects" and want to put themselves on the front lines in the battle for Arctic oil.

As The Associate Press reported:

Environmental groups in the Pacific Northwest are sensing a shift in the politics that surround energy production and have mobilized against a series of projects that would transform the region into a gateway for crude oil and coal exports to Asia.

"These proposals have woken a sleeping giant in the Northwest," said Eric de Place, policy director for Sightline Institute, a liberal Seattle think tank. "It has unleashed this very robust opposition movement."

Shell still needs other permits from state and federal agencies, including one to actually drill offshore in the Arctic and another to dispose of wastewater. But it's moving ahead meanwhile, using the Port of Seattle to load drilling rigs and a fleet of support vessels with supplies and personnel before spending the brief Arctic summer in the Chukchi Sea, which stretches north from the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia

.

___

Follow Martha Bellisle at https://twitter.com/marthabellisle

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Paddle in Seattle: Protest against Shell Arctic drilling
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2015/0516/Paddle-in-Seattle-Protest-against-Shell-Arctic-drilling
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe