Bill McKibben: Thursday, August 6, 2015
Shell Oil’s icebreaker Fennica is apparently on its way to the Arctic, ending a dramatic week-long siege that saw activists dangle from bridges and blockade the Portland harbor with kayaks, and a federal court threaten environmentalists with heavy fines.
Amid the drama of the action, and the drama of the courtroom, and the outpouring of thanks for activists from Greenpeace, Rising Tide, 350PDX and others, one more thing is worth remembering: There is no more contemptible company on earth than Shell Oil.
Earlier this year, in a landmark paper in Nature, a team of scientists showed which coal, oil, and gas simply must stay in the ground if we have any chance of staying below a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (a figure that is itself much too high). Tar sands oil must stay in the ground. Vast coal deposits in the Powder River basin must stay below ground. And “there is no climate-friendly scenario” that involves drilling for gas and oil in the Arctic.
That’s as stark a statement as you will ever get. And yet Shell went ahead and applied for permits to drill there anyway. They said, in essence, we don’t give a damn that we’re breaking the planet, we can make some money. That’s as sick as anything any company anywhere has ever done; the earth will pay the price for their greed for geologic time. They watched the Arctic melt and then they decided that would make it easier for them to drill for more oil.
To its everlasting shame, the Obama administration went along with Shell, providing the necessary permit earlier this month. And so now Shell is trying to drill. To meet the requirements of the law, they need an icebreaker near their rigs. (Despite their best efforts, some ice still remains in the Arctic.) But the icebreaker, in need of repairs, had to go to drydock in Portland, where it was trapped by brave citizens, some in kayaks, and others dangling from the St. Johns Bridge, keeping the icebreaker – the planet-breaker – at bay.
On a day when a city in Iran recorded perhaps the highest heat index the world has ever seen at 154 degrees, a federal judge ruled that Greenpeace, which organized the bridge-dangling blockade, was in contempt of court and threatened fines of a quarter million dollars a day. Shell, which brought the charges, was clearly attempting to break the back of the climate movement, just as it is trying to break the back of the climate.
They may succeed. They have immense resources. Against them the rest of us can muster only the currency of movements: passion, spirit, creativity. And sometimes we need to spend our bodies.
Those dangling activists on the bridge, those splendid kayaktivists in the water below: They were sticking up for the rest of us. They were doing their best to enforce the laws of nature, the laws of physics and chemistry. We all should pray they’re a match for the army of lawyers that the sick and reprehensible corporation Shell Oil is summoning. And when we’re done praying, we should chip in some money and some time.
Bill McKibben is an author and scholar in residence at Middlebury College. He co-founded 350.org, the largest global grassroots campaign organizing on climate change.
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
