Yesterday, socilaist Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant spoke via satellite phone with the Greenpeace pirates. who on Monday scaled the side of a Shell oil rig that’s being tugged across the Pacific Ocean to the Port of Seattle.
“We’re here [on the rig] because Shell already has demonstrated a terrible track record” on environmental issues, Aliyah Fields one of the 6 pirates said Sawant.
Sawant called the green buccaneers “heroic.” “You are doing tremendously amazing work for us,” whereas public officials and particularly the Port of Seattle, she said, have “completely let us down.” The Port, she said, should “immediately” revoke its agreement to let the oil company use Terminal 5 as a “home base” for its Arctic drilling fleet.
Environmentalists have vowed that if officials do nothing, they will form a kayak flotilla (call it the Little Armada That Could) to stop Shell from using the Port. Sawant seconded this plan during the call, saying that “we’re gonna provide all support for the kayak flotilla.”
Asked if she would personally float in the ‘tilla, Sawant was ambivalent. “I don’t know if I’m equipped to be in a kayak in terms of my experience with ... sea activities,” Sawant said. “I might, but even if I don’t, I’ll be in solidarity with everybody who’s gonna be on a kayak.” She said that for the time being, Seattle environmentalists’ should concentrate on organizing “a movement for mass, nonviolent disobedience ... to stop this insanity.”
The boarding is in protest of Shell’s planned summer drilling campaign in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska. Last week, the United States Department of Interior upheld a 2008 lease sale in the Chukchi Sea, moving Shell a step closer to returning to oil and gas exploration in the Arctic this summer.
"Environmentalists" oppose offshore energy exploration in the Arctic, saying that once production begins any oil spill would be extremely difficult to clean up.
Of course, the problem can be solved by requiring the multi-nationals to pay for every penny of an oil spill clean up, which would thus mean they would consider the cost of clean ups in their drilling calculations.
(via The Seattle Weekly and The Daily Mail)
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