Shard Climbing Action in London to Save the Arctic

Six women climbers from Greenpeace climb the face of the Shard, London’s tallest building, as part of the Save the Arctic campaign. The women, who are from the UK, Canada, Sweden, Poland, Holland and Belgium, chose to climb the Shard because it towers over Shell’s three London offices, including the oil giant’s global headquarters on the Southbank of the Thames. The climbers were cheered by crowds gathered at the foot of the skyscraper and watched by tens of thousands through a live stream on the Greenpeace website. Shell is leading the oil companies’ drive into the Arctic, investing billions in its Alaskan and Russian drilling programmes. Shell has invested $5bn in its Arctic programme, but after a series of embarrassing mishaps – including a grounded rig and a fire on a drill ship - it was forced to abandon its plans to drill for oil off the coast of Alaska this summer. But the company has now signed a deal with Vladimir Putin and state-owned oil giant Gazprom to drill in the Russian Arctic, a region where regulation is lax and accidents are commonplace. Greenpeace is campaigning for the area around the North Pole to be made a global sanctuary, off-limits to industrialization. More than three million people have already joined the call at savethearctic.org.