Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise

We had the thrill of touring the Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise ship on Sunday. I am holding the “Wave of Resistance #stop the pipelines Orca solidarity bracelet they gave us.

It has just come back from Antarctica where it took scientists to study the way to create a marine protected area in the midst of the drilling and resource extraction that is escalating at both the Antarctic and Arctic in the face of the melting of the polar ice caps. On the ship we learned that it was an ice breaker that breaks ice by pounding down on the ice with the rounded hull! That means it is very tippy in general ( they nicknamed it the “washing machine”). The ship actually dates to 1975.

Here is a description of their history from Greenpeace website:

“The Arctic Sunrise’s first trip took it to the North Sea and the northeast Atlantic, where Greenpeace documented marine pollution by oil from offshore installations. Since then it has worked everywhere from within 450 miles of the North Pole, to Antarctica’s Ross Sea, and has navigated both the Congo and the Amazon.”

There have been major push backs against the important Greenpeace missions.A Greenpeace boat was bombed and exploded by French scuba divers when it was protesting nuclear testing off New Zealand.

They were boarded by Russian armed militia and the entire crew imprisoned for several months, released at the beginning of the Sochi Olympics in 2014 (when the Pussy Riot protesters were also released).

They carry 35 -40 people from many countries in the world on their trips.

Our tour included the control room with both old fashioned and up to the minute controls.

We also had a presentation on the resistance to the expansion of the tar sands pipe line in BC ( the one the Canadian government just declared that they were buying), as well as facts about the production of tar sands ( vast amounts of fresh water to burn tar out of sand, then toxins to make it flow in the pipeline. A spill will lead to a massive die off in the sea as it is so dense nothing can be recovered and nothing can survive.

Here you see the cut out banner added for the Seattle stay “Chief Seattle is Watching”. They are going on from Seattle to Tacoma to support the protest of the liquified “natural” gas facility there that is being built without a permit on the Puyallup land by Puget Sound Energy. Puyallup Tribe is leading the protest. Puget Sound Energy is “owned by an Australian utility claiming to be a leader in green energy, but 60 percent of its supply comes from coal and “natural gas”, most of it fracked. Gas has been called a “Bridge” fuel in the transition to renewables, but methane released during extraction and transport means its as bad for the climate as coal because methane has 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide” quote from brochure handed out at Arctic Sunrise event . It ends are you in the blast zone? find out at Frackno253.com . It looks like the entire Northwest Detention Center is certainly in the blast zone.

if you want to see the industry PR, here is a link

Puget Sound Energy.