Lucy Lawless is a warrior in more ways than one. The 43-year-old Spartacus and Xena: Warrior Princess star is now an eco-warrior with reports that she has boarded a Shell contracted oil drillship in order to prevent it from leaving Auckland, New Zealand for U.S. waters off the shore of Alaska, according to a release from Greenpeace.
“I’m here today acting on behalf of the planet and my children,” Lawless, a mother of three, said speaking from the ship, according to Greenpeace.
Lawless and other environmental activists boarded the Noble Discoverer, which was en route to the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska to drill three exploratory wells over the course of the summer. Activists asserted that Shell’s exploratory drilling program threatens to devastate the fragile Arctic environment.
“Deep-sea oil drilling is bad enough, but venturing into the Arctic, one of the most magical places on the planet, is going too far. I don’t want my kids to grow up in a world without these extraordinary places intact or where we ruin the habitat of polar bears for the last drops of oil,” Lawless said regarding her involvement in the action.
Shell is the first international oil company to make Arctic drilling a major focus, according to Greenpeace.
“We’ve taken action today to stop Shell from drilling in the Arctic, where this reckless company wants to exploit the melting ice to make billions more in profit,” said Greenpeace US Deputy Campaign Director Dan Howells regarding the action “Shell must keep the Noble Discoverer in port, or risk a catastrophe in Alaska worse than the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.”
See more photos from Greenpeace New Zealand's Flickr.
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