To those who insist upon crying hypocrisy because the kayaktivists are using plastic kayaks and driving their vehicles to protest, let’s set something straight: First of all, most of us protesters do work for a living. I myself work a second shift full-time job, so I have lots of time during the day to exercise my First Amendment rights. (You know — the one that came before the Second Amendment?)
Secondly, far from being hypocrisy, this only serves to highlight the fact that we need more protests and less drilling! It used to be wooden kayaks were all you would find when you wanted to buy one. Now, they are rare. We would love to have other alternatives to petroleum-based products, and when we find them we do use them. But that’s the point; when that is mostly all that is available, that is all there is to use. And kayaks are made from mostly recycled plastic materials, not oil. Far less carbon is produced in their manufacture than in other products, or in drilling oil. Furthermore, they are durable products that last years and years. It’s not like we buy a new one every year or two. In addition, many protesters actually paddled there, as well as those who drove electric vehicles.
Of course photos of them don’t work in your cute little memes using completely unrelated stock photos of someone driving an SUV with plastic kayaks on top of it filling up at a gas station (in reality on their way on vacation, no doubt). But this is beside the point of the protest, which is to halt the attempt to drill in the last remaining pristine environment, the Arctic. It is very fragile, and there is no effective way to mitigate a spill. And we all know that a spill is inevitable. Anyone who wants to become informed about this potentially devastating scenario only needs to Google it. The information is out there: Nobody knows how to clean up an Arctic oil spill. So let’s not be silly and try to deflect from the purpose of the message. Shell No! No drilling in the Arctic!
Sue Swayzee
Marysville
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