Earth shorts: juxtaposing an article written by Mark Crutchley of Norwich Greenpeace and the OneWorldColumn with a video put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network (www.sanctuaryasia.com).
It’s Oil or the Planet
We live in a society so addicted to oil and the cheap travel it makes available that we are prepared to take enormous risks with the very planet on which we live to maintain the supply of this precious commodity.
The US government has just given Shell permission to drill in the Arctic, while Cairn Energy is already prospecting off the coast of Greenland and Russia is gearing up to exploit the resources off its Arctic coast.
Yes that is the same Shell which a UN investigation has just criticised for inadequate control and maintenance of its operations in Nigeria. These have created such disastrous pollution that it will take 30 years and billions of dollars to clean up. The same Shell spilling, admittedly smaller quantities, oil into the North Sea as I write.
Meanwhile in Canada BP and Shell again, are amongst the companies involved in the Tar Sands industry which produces oil by mining low quality bitumen deposits. In doing so the companies involved are going to rip up an area of forest the size of England and turn it into an industrial wasteland, complete with polluted watercourses.
What can we do? Well the Co-op has long led a campaign against the tar sands industry and Greenpeace amongst others is campaigning against both Arctic drilling and proposals to allow deep water drilling in UK waters. Those who propose putting the planet before the oil industry need your help and support. Mark Crutchley
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment