14 DAY TRIAL // United States President Barack Obama appears to be quite popular these days. In fact, he is so popular that folks seem unable to stop sending him letters and personalized messages.
However, none of these letters and messages are about expressing gratitude for something the President has done. On the contrary, they are all intended to twist Barack Obama's arm into making one decision or another.
Not to beat about the bush, it was this past April 17 that American actor Robert Redford published a blogpost on Eco Watch, explaining why President Obama must ban drilling in the Arctic .
Interestingly enough, this blogpost comes just a few days after former United States President Jimmy Carter put his name on a letter demanding that Barack Obama reject the Keystone XL pipeline project.
Much like Jimmy Carter, who thinks that the Keystone XL pipeline will facilitate tar sands exploitation and, in doing do, will fuel climate change and global warming, Robert Redford is concerned about how oil extracted from the Arctic will affect global weather patterns and temperatures.
“Left to their own devices, oil companies will drill and unleash every last bit of carbon-polluting crude they can get their hands on,” the American actor writes. Furthermore, “There’s a clear scientific consensus that pumping that much carbon into the atmosphere will change life on Earth as we know it.”
By the looks of it, the company that Robert Redford has a bone to pick with over its plans to drill in the Arctic is oil and gas giant Shell. Thus, the American actor argues that, following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, no company in its right mind would consider offshore drilling.
More so given the fact that, unlike the Gulf of Mexico, the Arctic is a fairly difficult region to explore and exploit, Robert Redford goes on to explain in his blogpost on Eco Watch.
“it boggles the mind that Shell Oil is still determined to drill in one of the most fragile and remote ecosystems on Earth: the Arctic Ocean. It’s sheer madness to drill in the Arctic – in treacherous conditions of gale-force winds, 20-foot seas, sub-zero temperatures, shifting currents – and for eight months of the year – solid pack ice,” the actor writes.
“If the oil industry was utterly unprepared for a blowout in the balmy Gulf of Mexico, how in the world can we trust them in a treacherous environment like the Arctic? Those harsh conditions also guarantee human and mechanical error,” Robert Redford adds.
Since there is strength in numbers – or at least this is what the American actor thinks – Robert Redford asks that folks in the United States join hands and pressure President Obama into implementing a ban on drilling activities in the Arctic. This ban would not only protect ecosystems in this part of the world, but would also help limit climate change and global warming by curbing dirty fuels availability.
Check out the video below to learn more about what Robert Redford thinks about Shell's plans to drill in the Arctic, and sign the DemandCleanPower petition if you want United States President Barack Obama to focus less on dirty fuels and more on renewables.
