Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Lucy Lawless Arrested For Protesting Oil Drilling In The Arctic


Lucy Lawless has always played strong female characters on television: she is most famous for her roles in Xena: Warrior Princess and Spartacus. This past weekend she took a stand against Shell and protested oil drilling in the Arctic, proving that she has just as much strength and determination in real life as the characters she has portrayed on TV.



This weekend a group of 7 Greenpeace volunteers, among them Lawless, climbed on board a ship owned by Shell that is going to be used for drilling oil in the Arctic.
According to Greenpeace.org: “Lucy boarded the Noble Discoverer as a member of the Greenpeace team, scaled the drillship’s derrick and occupied it along with six other climbers.” They faced high winds and grueling conditions which she described as being "pretty darn scary" and "not for sissies". After occupying the ship for 77 hours they peacefully disembarked and were arrested on Monday and charged with burglary. They are already out on bail.


According to Lawless’s blog, the protest was made to shed light on the fact that Shell plans on drilling for oil in the Arctic. Oil spills cause massive damage to the environment, and the Arctic has an extremely fragile ecosystem: “due to the harshness and remoteness of the Arctic environment, an oil spill up there will make the Gulf of Mexico look like a children’s party. An oil spill under the ice could rage for years before they could cap it. The plankton that prop up the whole ecosystem would die and the ripple effect would be heinous.”

The protest stands as a strong reminder that any oil spills in the Arctic could have serious consequences for the surrounding ecosystem and as Greenpeace points out: “there is really no solution or method today that we’re aware of that can actually recover [spilled] oil from the Arctic.”





Thanks to Lucy Lawless and her Greenpeace colleagues, a lot of media attention was given to the situation in the Arctic and thousands of emails were sent out to Shell from people voicing their opinion about the drilling. If you want to help Greenpeace and the Arctic you can take action here.  


Pictures Source: Greenpeace.org

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