“As we struggle to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change, it’s unthinkable that Shell could drill for oil in the Arctic”, the center’s attorney Kristen Monsell said in a statement.
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A group of kayakers is demanding that the Obama administration put an end to offshore oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Ocean. “I think that ought to be banned”.
“I think he is doing essentially a very good job, but on the fossil fuel side I would certainly be happier if he was not allowing so much activity like the Arctic drilling permit and the large amounts of coal extracted from public lands”, Gore said.
Former vice president and activist Al Gore lambasted President Barack Obama’s environmental policy Thursday, particularly the decision to allow exploratory wells to be drilled in the Arctic, which he said was “insane”.
The demonstration was held in conjunction with ongoing initiatives to stop Arctic drilling hosted by the Center for Biological Diversity. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Sen.
“A spill in the Arctic would be an environmental catastrophe of extraordinary proportions – and such a spill is inevitable if drilling proceeds”, said Merkley. In contrast, current proposals by Shell Oil Company to drill in the Chukchi Sea are over 900 air miles from the nearest Coast Guard station in Kodiak and over 1,200 miles from the nearest deep-water port in Dutch Harbor.
The move was met with cautious approval from the oil and gas industry, which views the vast untapped energy reserves of the Arctic as a major potential economic opportunity. The Arctic region is home to one of the world’s most delicate ecosystems, extreme and treacherous conditions, and severely limited capacity to respond to an oil spill or accident.
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Bill McKibben, a pioneer of the grassroots environmental movement and a leading opponent of the Keystone XL pipeline, went as far as to call the president’s decision a different form of climate-change denial in a New York Times op-ed in May.
