From a high school musician to the local chapter of the Raging Grannies, 150 people stormed a meeting of the Port of Seattle commissioners last week to oppose a lease that allows Royal Dutch Shell and Foss Maritime to moor ships connected to Arctic Ocean drilling operations.
“Shell picked the wrong city to drop a climate bomb on,” said University of Washington environmental science major Sarra Tekola, who skipped a class to address the commissioners.
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“The lease, which activists say was negotiated in secret, came to light just as Nature, one of the science community’s most trusted journals, released new findings warning that, if we are going to prevent a temperature rise of more than 2ºC by the end of the century, Arctic oil and gas reserves must remain in the ground,” Grist reports.
“Seattle news outlets and activists alike are using these facts as fire, and rallying together to convince port commissioners to rescind their lease with Foss, ergo Shell.”
In a release, Seattle Councilmember Mike O’Brien expressed “grave concerns about Shell Oil’s Arctic drilling fleet coming to Puget Sound in a damaged state, discharging oil and other toxic pollutants along our shorelines during transport and repair, jeopardizing the local ecosystem, and undoing decades of work to clean up the Sound.”
