Now that I'm out of the water, off the Esperanza and back on dry land, I've been thinking about what it takes to stop not just one oil rig but all of them.
There's no dodging the fact that the oil industry is immense. In the North sea, where we confronted Chevron, companies have spent more money on extracting oil in the region than NASA spent putting a man on the moon. In the Gulf of Mexico, where BP's Deepwater Horizon platform exploded this summer, there are over 3,500 other rigs ready to bore away at the seabed.
An industry that large has huge political clout, with paid lobbyists fighting legislative controls wherever they appear in the world.
But pressuring our politicians is not the only way to stop dangerous deepwater drilling. Big oil companies like BP also answer to large institutional investors like pension funds. And those funds are owned by people like you - and quite recently - me too.
I'll be honest, my interest in the long term health of our planet hasn't always been matched by the long-term health of my finances. But now that I'm treading the responsible path of a father-to-be and taking out a pension, I realise how deeply the two are related. The UN has some pretty enlightening statistics:
Of the $6.6 trillion in cost to the environment annually, a third of it comes from the world’s 3,000 largest publicly listed companies, including BP. Many pension funds are invested in these companies, which through their short-term actions are threatening the long-term health of not just the environment, but also the market on which these pension funds depend.
In short, the money that is meant to secure our future could be bankrolling its destruction, with disastrous consequences for our planet and future pay packets.
But there’s good news. Because our pension money is invested in these companies, we can use our influence to pressure them to get out of dirty oil and invest in a clean energy future.
Thousands of you have done this already, emailing your pension managers or – if you don’t have one – one of the UK’s largest pensions, Legal & General. It’s having an effect; industry insiders tell us it’s causing a big stir and several funds have written back to us already.
But if you haven’t yet, please take five minutes to write to your pension manager - or Legal & General - and get them to use their influence with companies like BP so that they can go beyond oil.
It’s every bit as important as jumping in front of a drill ship. And it’s less cold.
