From King 5 news
Right now all entranceways to Terminal 5 in the Port of Seattle are blocked in protest of Shell's plans to drill in the Arctic. Hundred of people converged on the terminal around 7:am this morning. It is the top news event on local TV channels.
“Everyone is out here today, we have scientists, teachers and city councilmembers risking arrest because they understand the severity of this moment,” said Sarra Tekola a student with Divest University of Washington who recently won a vote to divest their school’s endowment from Coal. “Climate change isn't a polar bear issue it's a human rights issue, climate change displaces people from their countries, 40 years ago desertification kicked my father out of his country in Ethiopia and it's going to get worse. This is our lunch counter to sit on, this is our history to be made, we hold the world in our hands.”
A loose network of several dozen groups calling themselves the sHell No! Action Council (SNAC) organized today’s action. SNAC has focused their opposition to Arctic Drilling on the impacts of Global Warming on the impacts on peoples in the Global South and indigenous communities.
The latest fromKing 5 news in Seattle.
Update:
Live Blog here
Update: 10:22 am
Food, music, toilets and people calling friends to join from their smart phones. Terminal shut down. City Councilperson Kshama Sawant, a political maverick in our midst spoke to the crowd.
From all indications looks like this will be going on for a while.
10:45 AM PT: Update: 10:44
10:47 AM PT:
11:23 AM PT: The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell talks the talk on climate change, but a company document used to guide Shell's business planning suggests that the company is pursuing a strategy that would mean a catastrophic 4C rise in global temperatures. That is well above the 2C limit considered the threshold for dangerous climate change.
Both the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust are invested in Shell - a company that is clearly not taking the problem of climate change seriously, or its responsibility to do something about it. The foundations also say they carefully screen the companies they invest in to ensure they act in line with their goals. The conclusions will, I think, be unsettling for any investor (and readers) - particularly foundations whose raison d'etre is not to make money for the sake of it, but to make the world a better place.
http://www.theguardian.com/...
12:05 PM PT:
12:23 PM PT: Found this tweet and just had to put it in the diary. With a blogging name of John Crapper and all just sort of said things the way I like them said.
12:41 PM PT: Live stream.
12:58 PM PT: Getting some tweets about more police activity. I'm not down there so not sure.