Protestors in Seattle have a knack for irony.
Several weeks ago a swarm of protestors in kayaks protested the presence of an offshore drilling rig in the port, one operated by Royal Dutch Shell. The rig is destined for work in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, in the Arctic.
Now, the idea of producing oil offshore in the Arctic, where there is next to zero ability to respond to a spill, is not the brightest, I will grant you. But the protestors do not appear to be the brightest, either.
On June 15 they were out again in force, paddling madly in front of the two tugboats pulling the massive rig out to sea. Coast Guard rigid infl atable hull boats did their best to run interference.
Those kayakers were again in their plastic or fibreglass boats. Most were wearing synthetic materials for clothes. I am pretty sure all their life jackets were also synthetic, i.e. made from petrochemicals.
It’s not that these protestors didn’t have a choice. They could have burned the centre out of old growth trees, creating large dugout canoes that are prevalent along British Columbia coast and the U.S. Pacific northwest.
Or they could have captured seals and made animal skin kayaks, as was the original design for these boats. Their life jackets could have been fi lled with kapok, instead of
Why not dugout canoes or animal skin kayaks?
 Styrofoam. Their clothes could have been natural fibres, like the woolen jackets worn by British sailors for hundreds of years.
From the photos and videos I have seen, I don’t think any of those protestors made those choices. You see, instead of hunting the seals, preparing their hides, and stitching them together into a vessel that will hopefully remain watertight, they just went down to the local store and bought a fi breglass kayak.
Fibreglass includes a resin, made from petrochemicals.
That’s the stuff the drilling rig is meant to produce. But don’t worry about that, Mr. Protestor. It’s okay to drink your fair-trade coffee, imported by bunker-fuel powered ships made of steel (which is made with coking coal) while waiting for your protest to begin. And those plastic chairs sitting outside the coffeeshop, with its vinyl awning, should hold your righteous arse up the proper distance from the paved street where you parked your SUV. One needs an SUV with a proper roof rack to haul the kayak, remember?Someone forgot to include a roof rack on the grey old mare
feeding in the back 40.
And while sipping this fair-trade coffee in a plastic gocup, one should also feel just fi ne about texting on his cellphone “designed in California,” and manufactured in perhaps questionable conditions in China. But all is well, since the plastic and rubber case on said cellphone will protect it if dropped on the asphalt-paved street while deploying a nylon umbrella to fend off the Seattle rains. Just pick it up and put it in the pocket of your rayon shirt made by child labour in a Bangladesh factory that may or may not collapse on its workers this week.
If you do fall out of your fibreglass kayak, be sure to protest the production of the jet fuel used to power the composite- built helicopter hovering overhead to pull you out of the water. I’m sure the rescue diver who jumps in after you won’t need that rubber dry-suit, after all.
If someone wishes to protest, perhaps he or she should actually practice just one iota of what he or she preaches
