science

Save the Arctic

Save the Arctic is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Save the Arctic rather than just read about it. In short: Save the Arctic is a Greenpeace campaign to protect the Arctic, principally by preventing oil drilling and unsustainable industrial fishing in the area completely, surrounded by an Arctic-Environmental economics-Zone. The campaign, begun in 2012, calls for a sanctuary in the uninhabited high seas area around the North Pole, similar to the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty.

Key takeaways

Save the Arctic belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Save the Arctic to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Save the Arctic from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Save the Arctic is a Greenpeace campaign to protect the Arctic, principally by preventing oil drilling and unsustainable industrial fishing in the area completely, surrounded by an Arctic-Environmental economics-Zone. The campaign, begun in 2012, calls for a sanctuary in the uninhabited high seas area around the North Pole, similar to the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. The campaign aims to begin this process by prompting a United Nations resolution on protection for the Arctic. Due to Russian invasion in Ukraine, world's 13% oil reserves could be a melting point in the Arctic.

Background The Arctic may contain around 20% of the world's remaining undiscovered oil and gas resources. As most easily extractable fossil fuel reserves have been exploited, and the Arctic ice pack shrinks, governments and oil companies have begun to look for new resources in the Arctic. Given these possible threats, in 2008 the European Parliament proposed opening negotiations on a treaty to protect the Arctic.

Support Greenpeace began the campaign aiming to take a million signatures supporting the campaign to place on the sea bed at the North Pole in April 2013. At the beginning of 2013, the petition registered over 2.5 million signatures. The petition will be accompanied on the sea bed by a flag designed by young people, in partnership with the Girl Guides and Vivienne Westwood. Paul McCartney, Robert Redford, Alejandro Sanz and Richard Branson are amongst those who support this campaign. The World Wide Fund for Nature is running a related campaign to protect Arctic polar bear habitat, in partnership with Coca-Cola.

Campaign Oil companies exploring the Arctic, include Rosneft, Royal Dutch Shell, Gazprom, and ExxonMobil.

Royal Dutch Shell Greenpeace and Avaaz have focused their campaigning at the beginning of 2013 on Royal Dutch Shell, including with the use of a parody website. In 2010, in the immediate aftermath of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Greenpeace activists painted "No Arctic Drilling" with spilled BP oil on the side of a ship that Shell planned to use for oil exploration in the Arctic. At the protest, Phil Radford of Greenpeace called for "President Obama [to] ban all offshore oil drilling and call for an end to the use of oil in our cars by 2030." In July 2014, Greenpeace launched a global boycott campaign to persuade Lego to cease producing toys carrying Shell's logo in response to the oil company's plans to drill for oil in the Arctic. Lego's partnership with Shell dates back to the 1960s, although a fictional oil company called Octan featured as the corporation headed by the villain President Business in The Lego Movie. Lego has used the Octan name since 1992 for its fictitious oil company, branding many filling stations, trucks and race cars.

Gazprom

Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise ship case After an incident in the Kara Sea with the Russian authorities in August 2013 during a "Save-the-Arctic-banner-action", the Greenpeace-ship Arctic Sunrise again was stopped in the Pechora Sea: On Wednesday 18 September, two Greenpeace activists were arrested, protesting against Arctic oil drilling on the Gazprom platform Prirazlomnaya (de) within the exclusive economic zone. Greenpeace International told on their campaign-website, the activists "were held overnight without charges or legal representation aboard a Russian Coast Guard vessel." On September 19, the Russian Coast Guard "illegally boarded the Greenpeace-ship, while in international waters. 11 warning shots have been fired at Arctic-Sunrise, the activists threatened with knives and guns. 30 activists were arrested, 27 "are being held by the Russian Coast Guard against their will". Phil Radford, executive director of Greenpeace USA, stated that the reaction of the Russian Coast Guard "was the stiffest response that Greenpeace has encountered from a government since the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985." To free their activists and end Arctic drilling, the campaigners claimed to sign a petition to the Russian Ambassadors all over the world, and to send a protest-note to Authorities. In continuity of the successful campaign to reach the Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, in 2012 and 2013 protests with "Save the Arctic" banners were started. To stop oil- and gas-drilling, industrial fishing and military operations in the Arctic region completely, a "global sanctuary in the high arctic" was demanded from the World leaders at the UN General Assembly: "We want them to pass a UN resolution expressing international concern for the Arctic." A resolution to protect the very vulnerable wildlife and ecosystem. 30 Arctic Sunrise activists were arrested in the Pechora Sea, 19 September 2013, witnessing oil-drilling and protesting at the Gazprom platform Prirazlomnaya by the Russian Coast Guard. Greenpeace members were originally charged with Piracy, then later downgraded to hooliganism, before being dropped altogether following the passage of an amnesty law by the Russian government. Today the Gazprom platform Prirazlomnaya is the only platform in the world which continues drilling, oil extraction, and storage operations. Though the project has been heavily criticized by environmental groups there have never happened serious emergencies. The platform is compliant with the most stringent safety requirements. There are walls of caisson between the well and the sea. Spill of oil and petroleum products from the well into the sea is excluded.

Criticism The campaign has been criticised for not accounting for the legal differences in ownership between Antarctica and the Arctic.

See also Antarctic Arctic Refuge drilling controversy Climate change in the Arctic Seattle Arctic drilling protests

References

External links Save the Arctic campaign website

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Save the Arctic

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Save the Arctic claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Save the Arctic before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Save the Arctic ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Save the Arctic

In research: Save the Arctic appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Save the Arctic in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Save the Arctic is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Criminal cases in Russia, Environment of the Arctic, Environmental impact of fishing, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Save the Arctic outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Save the Arctic in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Save the Arctic means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Save the Arctic out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Save the Arctic in simple terms?

Why does Save the Arctic matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Save the Arctic?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Save the Arctic.