The Arctic is once again under attack from oil companies.
Over the past year we’ve seen just how reckless Arctic drilling is. Shell, one of the world’s biggest and most powerful corporations, has been leading the charge but a catalogue of screw-ups forced it to pause its drilling program in Alaska.But Shell hasn’t given up yet - far from it. Instead they’ve signed a deal with Gazprom and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has thrown open the back door and invited Shell to drill in the Russian Arctic instead, where corruption is rife and oil companies are largely unregulated.
The Russian Arctic is fast becoming the new battleground where the fight to save the Arctic will be won or lost. A major oil spill – one as bad as BP’s Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico - is almost inevitable as long as the oil giants are allowed to operate there, posing a huge threat to Indigenous communities and polar bear populations.
Watch the video to find out just how bad Shell’s new friends are.
And the irony is the only reason Shell and Gazprom can drill there at all is because climate change is melting the Arctic ice cap. They want to drill for the fuels that caused the melting in the first place. It’s a vicious circle and it’s time to do all we can to break it.
The first step is to build a movement big enough to stand up to some of the most powerful corporations on the planet.
In just 12 months the movement to Save the Arctic has grown to over three million people and we are starting to be heard in the corridors of power. The only reason Shell paused in Alaska was because they knew that they weren’t capable of drilling there safely and, with the eyes of the world watching them, that they couldn’t afford to make yet another mistake.
We can win this battle, but we need millions more people to join, to draw a line a line in the ice and make it clear to Shell and its friends that ‘you come no further’.
It starts here. Join Save the Arctic and help stop Shell.
