Lucy Lawless is determined to keep fighting climate change following her sentencing yesterday for occupying a Shell drilling ship in Taranaki.
She and six other Greenpeace activists received fines for $600 and 120 hours community work at the New Plymouth court yesterday.
“We set out to bring home the scientists’ message on climate change to real people, because politicians aren’t listening to the scientists, [and] their policies can only be guided by the people so we need people to understand what’s at stake here by not changing out policies on fossil fuels.”
Ms Lawless says it is imperative that we change our way of thinking.
“If we want to live we have to save the Arctic,” says Lawless.
Greenpeace senior climate campaigner Simon Boxer says the evidence supporting climate change is clear.
“It’s a clear sign that climate change is speeding up, the fact that the oil industry is able to now consider going into the Arctic. What we saw a few years ago was the Deep Water Horizon disaster where a huge quantity of oil leaked for three months, now if you imagine that happening in the pristine Arctic where it’s very cold, you’re talking about decades and decades [of damage], and we could actually be talking about the extinction of some unique species there.”
“People have to stand up and say ‘No, it’s not acceptable,” says Mr Boxer.
“I think the protest was very successful, I think if you look at the appalling record Shell have had in the Arctic last year …we’ve seen them have big problems there. They’re not actually a very high technological and competent industry, and we have to hold them accountable.”
Ms Lawless says she will continue to fight for the issue even if it damages her career.
“My career is nothing compared to my grandchildren’s life,” she says.
“I’d love to be able to go ‘my job is done’, but unfortunately fighting climate change is probably going to go on for all the days of my life.
“If we can hold it to two degrees we might be able to adjust, but if it goes higher than that terrible, terrible catastrophes are going to follow.”
Watch the video to see the full interview.
source: newshub archive
