Last Saturday I took part in a group bike ride with a difference.
Not for me the Alps, or Pyrenees or the Welsh mountains – various destinations I have all cycled in the past. Instead the cycle group I joined took me past most of the Shell petrol stations in South West London. Why? Well, the clue is in the title.
This was the Arctic peloton – a group of everyday cyclists, who came together to protest against Shell’s plans to drill in the arctic. Our ride happened on the very same day as the Tour de France individual time trial that confirmed Bradley Wiggins historic tour victory, more about that later.
Normally I can be found sitting behind a desk, at the Greenpeace offices in North London. My day job at Greenpeace is the Head of IT, which involves helping the organisation achieve its goals through the use of Information technology. Sounds a bit dry, well not really, I get to help others make wonderful things happen, things like Greenpeace-TV (the world's first live direct action TV channel), which for 12 hours broadcast live on the Internet, our mass day of action against shell. There is the usual operational stuff of course, budgets to be set, servers my team have to upgrade etc. But it’s all normally from the comfort of my desk. I had never, until now, been on a protest that put me in direct contact with the public about an issue we are campaigning on.
So why now, why this one? They call the individual time trial the race of truth because it is the rider against the clock. The arctic peloton ride I was on also felt like a race of truth, in that that it is also a race against time. A race to get the message across to the general public that Shell’s plans to drill in the arctic is wrong, and must be stopped, before it is too late.
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