Saturday morning and its still a bit chilly, but fortunately the reception we are getting from many people is the opposite. Together with Yvette and Becky, both having their first taste of Greenpeace activity, we chatted to the morning shoppers and drivers at a busy parade of shops right by the Shell garage on Plumstead Road in Norwich.The idea of drilling for oil in the arctic seems to be one that many people, shoppers or motorists, can immediately see is a very bad one. Everywhere the oil industry has ever operated there have been spills and generally ineffectual clean-ups; to do that in a place as fragile as the arctic is nonsensical. "I'm afraid it's all going to melt" as one very old chap said to me, and he's right.
The night before four of us had visited the Shell garage on the Ipswich Road, a major artery running out of the city. The manager had been very friendly - even wished us good luck - and quite a few drivers had taken leaflets, but there had been disappointingly little in the way of passers by and I came home with most of our leaflets still in my bag (though a nice Cornish pint in my belly partly compensated). It goes to show the importance of target selection - I got that one wrong.
There are some messages it can be hard to get across to people - I don't think this is going to be one of them. Given the facts I think most of the public are going to be on our side, we just need to prod them into activity. So here's looking forward to more Shell related things for us to get on with and lets make them wish they had never seen the arctic as a good place to drill.
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