|
2012-02-15 RESTCo's submission to the Environmental Audit Committee of UK House of Commons -
Protecting the Arctic
(
Also available at the U.K. government's website)
2012-02-02 On February 2, 2012, Dr. Willam A. (Bill) Adams presented a paper at the 2012 Northern Lights
conference, which was authored by him and Christopher (Chris)
Ives. Bill and Chris are both RESTCo principals. The title of the paper is
"Operating in the Arctic Ocean: Environmental Realities and Technical Challenges". It deals with
the potential for offshore drilling for oil and natural gas in the icy waters of the Arctic,
and potential consequences. The paper is also available at the
Northern Lights 2012 conference website.
“The Inuit are struggling to cope with erosion, melting permafrost, thinning sea ice, receding glaciers,
and an invasion of new animals, many of which we don’t even have names for.”
Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Nobel Peace Prize nominee in 2007,
at the Fifth Science Centre World Congress, June 2008
The world is changing, and more rapidly for remote and northern communties than for the industrialized
and urbanized world in more temperate regions. So long as the communities of the Canadian north remain
dependent on oil as their primary
energy source, they can have no moral justification for resisting the exploitation of fossil
fuel resources in their territories, no matter how strong the facts may be to support their
objections. We are now the 'coal-mine canaries' in the climate change experiment.
Energy is the lifeblood of modern life in the industrialized world.
Current changes threaten the supply of reliable and
abundant energy in new ways. We need new ways of thinking to address this new vulnerability.
|