Our Executive Director is a real stick-in-the-mud

Sakhalin Island, Russia – Today I had the opportunity to accompany our partners at Sakhalin Environment Watch on one of their trips to inspect pipeline construction for the Sakhalin-II project, which is being led by Gazprom and Shell.  What I saw was shocking – even to me, and I’ve seen a lot of pretty bad places!  Despite an enormous amount of public concern about how the pipeline will affect salmon streams, pressure from international banks to clean up the river crossings, and a huge crackdown by the Russian government on the project’s environmental violations, the pipeline is just causing more and more damage.

We visited a slope that was a focus of the government crackdown against Shell last year.  And it’s now looking even worse.  You can see a hole forming in the middle of the slope from erosion – erosion that’s all going downstream into salmon spawning rivers.  Those are our partners Dmitry Lisitsyn and Zhenya Konovalov at Sakhalin Environment Watch that you can see in the photos.  

They think the problems with the pipeline are because Shell failed to complete a good project design.  Shell clearly still isn’t doing enough – it isn’t planting the slope, for example, which would increase slope stability.  But the problems will continue to get worse – they picked a bad route in mountainous conditions with very poor soils prone to erosion.  Following the construction, it’s even more likely that after strong rainstorms (as we’ve had the last couple of days) we will see landslides and debris flows that could destroy sections of the pipeline.  One geologist told us today, “I pray that the pipeline will be destroyed in a landslide before they put oil into it.  Because once they put oil into the pipeline, and the landslide happens, it will be much worse.” 

Our inspection of the pipeline had its own adventures. We’d had a lot of rain in the last day, which made the roads bad and the mud worse.  At one point, as I was trying to get close to a severely eroded area on the pipeline route, I stepped into some mud and sank up to my knees!  It just goes to show how bad the conditions are in Sakhalin – and clearly the conditions are too difficult for the engineers at Shell. 

Today brought yet another of the myriad of articles reporting record melting of sea ice in the Arctic: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/09/21/MNMISACP7.DTL 

The sea ice has melted to record lows below.  Our colleague Kassie Siegel over at Center for Biological Diversity says that it’s melted more this year than was originally projected for 2050.  This news comes just after scientists said that polar bears will largely be extinct by 2050: http://www.pacificenvironment.org/article.php?id=2571 

The Arctic, the air conditioner for the earth, is melting.  So far, what’s the response?  Let’s explore for more oil and gas in the Arctic.  Russia is laying claim to a large portion of the Arctic: http://uk.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUKL2082113920070920, primarily for oil and gas development.  Or check out this map, which shows proposed and existing oil and gas leases in the Arctic, Bering Sea, and the Sea of Okhotsk, along with Russia’s territorial claims. 

Looks like we’re zoning the Arctic for oil and gas.  Ironic, isn’t it?  There are winners and losers in climate change, and the large oil companies will try to be winners.  I think a smarter way to go would be to push for an Arctic treaty to help protect the Arctic as we deal with climate change. 

Alaska glacier by Britt Constantine, mother and lifelong Alaskan.

I attended a fascinating conference yesterday about the global politics of climate change, put on by the World Affairs Council .  I spoke on a panel about how to engage the developing world.  This led to a healthy discussion about the need to engage the public in China and Russia in climate change events as well as our responsibilities to the communities of the Arctic that are feeling the brunt of climate change impacts.  I talked about the disconnect between climate change and our energy choices.  Why are we rushing ahead with oil and gas development in the Arctic when we know that this very development will fuel climate change impacts that will bear down on the Arctic? 

While sitting in the conference, I saw this news flash from the Anchorage Daily News (link:  Chukchi Sea Village empties as storm threatens).  The coastal Native village of Kivalina has been evacuated due to an approaching Arctic storm.  The article notes that Kivalina has lost more than 100 feet of coastline the last three years to waves and storm surges.  This is a community that is feeling the brunt of climate change impacts.  My thoughts are with the community.  I am thankful that most people have been evacuated and hope that the storm does not cause too much damage.  As we make our energy choices moving forward, perhaps we should consider the impacts our choices will have on villages like Kivalina?