In a major victory for fragile Arctic ecosystems a federal appeals court has ruled that the Bush Administration illegally approved Shell’s plans to drill for oil in the Beaufort Sea, just off the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. NRDC and EarthJustice – along with a coalition of Alaska Native organizations and conservation groups – had sued the Department of the Interior because the rush to industrialize the wildlife-filled waters was posing a major threat to polar bears, endangered bowhead whale and the Inupiat subsistance way of life. The court’s ruling orders the government to study and disclose the “significant harm” that the sensitive Arctic environment could suffer from Shell’s drilling.
“This decision shows that oil companies can’t get away with simply killing wildlife and destroying the Inupiat’s way of life, which depends on that wildlife,” said Chuck Clusen , director of NRDC’s Alaska Project. “The court has signaled that the rushto drill the Arctic was too much, too fast and too shoddy. It opens the door for the Obama Administration to take a new approach – hopefully to drilling in America’s Arctic.” The Arctic is undergoing a transformation due to global warming, which has caused the rapid retreat of summer sea ice and raised alarms about the survival of wildlife such as the polar bear. New data have shown that a large portion of Alaska’s bowhead whale population uses the waters where Shell wants to drill.
Nevertheless, the Bush Administration charged ahead by approving Shell’s plan – in violation of the law – which would have entailed icebreakers, drill ships, supply boats and air traffic. Government experts have predicted that drilling in the Beaufort will cause at least one oil spill – a spill that could spread into the migratory routes of the endangered bowhead whale, blanket the shores of the Arctic Refuge where polar bears give birth and decimate hundreds of thousands if migratory birds. There is no known method for cleaning up oil in the icebound Beaufort. The exploring phase of Shell’s drilling posed still other risks, including deafening underwater noise produced by seismic air guns in locating oil deposits- amoung the most intense sounds generaTED BY HUMANKIND. One seismic survey can last for days or weeks as air guns are fired every 10 to 15 seconds.
Peacehq
FootPrints For 
