Free The Arctic 30: they're fighting climate change

Asad Rehman

02 October 2013

Today several Greenpeace activists have been charged with piracy in Russia. They face up to 15 years in jail. Their crime? Peacefully protesting against Arctic drilling that poses a huge threat to our climate and us all.

I am horrified by pictures released of masked Russian guards boarding the Greenpeace ship, the Arctic Sunrise. They abseiled down from a helicopter onto the ship, and held the crew at gunpoint. The activists were trying to hang a banner on a gas platform to stand in the way of Russian gas giant Gazprom, which is planning to drill in the Arctic.

All 30 people on the ship were taken ashore and detained, including a journalist and photographer. The first person to be charged today was a British freelance videographer who used to work for The Times. More charges are expected over the coming hours and days.

While all this has been going on, I've been spending days - and late nights - listening to the world's leading climate scientists in Stockholm as they launched their latest (IPCC) report. The world has received the most conclusive evidence to date that climate change is real and manmade.

Of course you don't need to be a scientist to know that our climate is changing. We've all seen pictures of extreme storms, droughts and floods on TV, which are impacting millions of people across the globe.

Things will get a lot worse, the scientists said, if the world fails to take decisive action. But far from being merchants of doom, they were clear that change is possible. If we break our addiction to dirty energy and leave over 80% of proven fossil fuels in the ground, we can prevent more damaging climate change.

Switching to cleaner energy wouldn't just be good for the planet: it would also deliver affordable power for billions. Quacks like our Environment Secretary Owen Paterson may want to ignore this truth, but it seems the big energy corporations know the writing's on the wall. That's why they're rushing to exploit every last bit of dirty fossil fuels, be it in the Arctic, the fields of Balcombe in West Sussex, or in the Niger Delta - even though it condemns us to climate devastation.

Thankfully millions of people from all over the world, including the brave crew of the Arctic Sunrise, are determined not to let them get away with it. Supporters of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and many different groups and networks from every corner of the world, are coming together this month in a global show of force to face down these companies.

They won't quit easily. But as Mahatma Gandhi once said, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win".

You can show your support for The Arctic 30 this Saturday 5 October, in London. There will be a large protest outside the Russian Embassy from 1-3pm. Come down to  Kensington Palace Gardens and lets join together to make sure that we bring the Arctic crew home safely.

Asad Rehman, Senior International Climate Campaigner.