Arctic pirates

It is tempting to ridicule Vladimir Putin as someone constantly seeking to prove his macho credentials, or indeed as just another national leader with a penchant for taking his shirt off, but what is happening, and might happen, to the 28 Greenpeace activists from 19 countries looks like the latest in a lengthy series of viciously repressive moves to quash opposition to an increasingly authoritarian regime, and is far too serious for such flippancy.

The focus of the Greenpeace action, Gazprom, is a massive, state-controlled energy company which is hungry for new oil & gas reserves to exploit (ref). Naturally the oil & gas-dependent Russian authorities are not happy with Greenpeace’s efforts to stop them, but their response begs the question of which group are the pirates.  The peaceful protestors, or the brutal government intent on filling its coffers from beyond its national boundaries and seemingly regardless of the wider environmental impact ?

Of course, Gazprom are simply first in the queue for a piece of the Arctic pie, but Russia appears to regard the Arctic as its own, having planted their national flag under the North Pole. Their stated aims do include protecting the ecosystem whilst they, ahem, develop 8 floating nuclear power stations and extract a large proportion of the estimated 90 billion barrels of oil & 1670 trillion cubic feet of gas north of the Arctic Circle (ref). Given the potential risks to the fragile Arctic ecosystem, and the longer term environmental implications of such short term profiteering, the scepticism of Greenpeace and others doesn’t seem unreasonable.

Meanwhile, for those of us lacking the courage and commitment of those activists, the least we can do is add our voices to the protest against their imprisonment.