From Leila, campaigner on board the Esperanza...
Dear Mr Bill Gammell,
I am writing to you from the bridge of the Esperanza. My friends are currently hanging in tents under the Stena Don oil rig that you are using to search for the last drops of oil here at the end of the Earth. We want to stop you from drilling here. I thought it appropriate to write to you, to back up our action with another letter, asking you again to please rethink your current plans.
Yesterday, I sat under an iceberg that had just been released by your tug-ships. They had been towing it out of the path of your oil rigs up here in the Arctic. Next to our inflatable boat, a seal popped his head up to get a look at us. As we floated there huge chunks of ice sheared from the side of the iceberg. It frightened me. It echoed the fate of our planet as it melted and crashed into the ocean.
I wonder about you, Mr Gammell. I wonder if you have grandchildren yet? If you do, and they ask you what your job is, I wonder what you say? Do you tell them Grandad is a trailblazer, a 'pioneer', and leave it at that? Or do you tell them the whole truth? And when they ask you about climate change, about the way the world is heating up, the weather changing and the ice-caps melting, what will you tell them? Will you tell them that whilst millions cried out for change, for the world to stop using fossil fuels in order that we stand a chance of a liveable planet for our children, you were towing icebergs from the melting Arctic out of the path of your oil rigs so that they could continue to seek out the Earth's last drops?
Have you been here, Mr Gammell? To the roof of the world that you are 'prospecting' in an attempt to blaze a trail for Big Oil to follow - for your friends at Shell, Chevon and Exxon to get a new line in, to feed the world's addiction? Have you sailed past the imposing mountains of western Greenland, far out into Baffin Bay, past the blue icebergs with a texture like granite, broken fresh from the melting glaciers of the Arctic? Have you watched as the graceful humpback breaks the surface of the crystal ocean with his barnacled back and the grumpy sea lion scowls at your ship's hull?
I have. It's beautiful. But it's not an easy place to be. If I could show the world's governments what I can seen from my porthole, I don't think they'd let your rigs be here. For how many years can you guarantee that you can bat off these icebergs? How long can you hold out without incident or accident in this place where storms, thick fog and winds come from nowhere at all?
How will you fix a blowout like we saw in the Gulf of Mexico if it happens here, in October, with the sea ice closing in? If you have all your safety plans in hand, why not make them public? What are you hiding?
Crossing your fingers and hoping for the best is no way to treat this place. Its no way to treat our planet. Climate change is not someone else's problem. Its yours and its mine. By drilling for the last drops of oil, far from being a trailblazer, you are only extending a tragic track we've been headed down since we first got into fossil fuels on a grand scale 150 years ago. That path has a dead end, an end where we run out of resources, out of energy, and out of time to stop the breakdown of our biosphere.
On behalf of my friends out there on your rig in the freezing cold, on behalf of all the crew here on the Espy, on behalf of all who might have their own grandchildren one day: Please Mr Gammell, think again. Do things differently. Go beyond oil. Leave the Arctic alone.
Yours, Leila Deen
