No New Oil
Yesterday the Government suggested we need not worry about the
impact of oil development because seismic testing was only likely to
give whales and dolphins a bit of a headache. We all know what the
effect of a headache has on our own libidos but with whales and dolphins
we are talking about species that are on the verge of extinction. And
so a headache affecting their libido has slightly worse implications
than it does for our own lives.
Just before we went into Court today, I was talking to one of the
Government's main advisors, Mark Tasker, and he told me that in his
opinion the case was based around three words: territory (which refers
to where the Habitats Directive applies); strict and disturbance (which
both refer to the wording of the Directive around the protection of
whales and dolphins).
So I asked him why, in that case, most of the Government's argument was
taken up with a discussion about the technical issues of delay and
getting the case thrown out on that basis. Because for most of this
morning, all the Government QC has been talking about is why Greenpeace
should have brought the case earlier. But then incredibly, she ended up
saying that we hadn't shown any evidence to the Court that whales and
dolphins were likely to be harmed. We now do have that evidence which is
why we are now bringing the case.
