Sometimes events that, on their own, do not seem to represent much importance, fall together. Combined, they can be perceived as almost an omen.
Tonight I had an experience like that. On the eve of the day that, for the first time in at least 800K years, or maybe all of human history, carbondioxide will officially make it over the 400 ppm threshold for a whole month, I heard a tanker was on its way from the Prirazlomnoye oilfield.
Tonight it is expected to dock in the port of Rotterdam.
The first time a commercial load of crude is sold and ready to be processed, originating from the Arctic.
Although it is hard to see what I could possibly accomplish, I needed to go out and have a look at what I see as a sort of ‘crossing the Rubicon’.
This is the mouth of river Rhine, the Port where Rosneft will soon deliver its first scavenged payload of fossil fuel. Historic ground; the ‘Atlantik Wall’ bunker was built to prohibit anything coming in. Maybe it should be operated like that once more… against Arctic oil…
I didn’t actually get to see the tanker. I thought it could have been the ‘Pechora Star’ coming in:
There’s a lot of activity over here. I live near the throbbing heart of the BAU scenario… The actual ship is the Mikhail Ulyanov, and it has shut its GPS tracker to sneak in unnoticed.
In the strengthening darkness there’s an eerie glare over the industries stretching right into the North Sea. Strange. No one out there, just fishermen on the pier. " Nothing to worry about" .
I hope Greenpeace will succeed in getting this message out.