LAT: Surfers, celebs protest massive floating gas terminal off Malibu

[DeepModem Mom]

A wave of celebrity protest in Malibu
By Kenneth R. Weiss, Times Staff Writer
October 22, 2006


(Stephen Osman / LAT)
A wave of protest in Malibu
Celebrities join surfers in opposition to a proposed offshore natural gas terminal.

The campaign to halt various proposals to build natural gas terminals off the Southern California coast has been a rather subdued affair — until Sunday, when a parade of celebrities and surfers showed up in Malibu to join the protest.

The target of the demonstration was a massive floating terminal proposed for about 14 miles off the coast by Australian mining giant BHP Billiton....

***

Halle Barry, Cindy Crawford, Dick Van Dyke, Ted Danson, Jane Seymour, Pierce Brosnan and others showed up at Malibu's Surfrider Beach on Sunday to lend their star power to the issue, giving it a brief, if fleeting, moment of international attention. Fans, paparazzi and television networks from as far away as Australia mobbed the celebrities as helicopters hovered.

Daryl Hannah, in a black wetsuit, drew attention by carrying a surfboard across the sand and joining several hundred surfers in a paddle-out protest. Once outside the breakers, the surfers arranged their boards to form a giant circle with a slash through the middle, the worldwide symbol for "prohibited."

"Finally, I'm getting people to pay attention to this issue," said Susan Jordan, director of the California Coastal Protection Network. "The goal was to send the governor a message: to terminate the terminal. His is the last voice that actually stops this terminal from being approved."

Jordan and others say the proposed terminal would contribute to Southern California's already smoggy skies, potentially harm marine life and use untested technology to warm the explosive gas and bring it onshore....

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-surf23oct23,0,7097395.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[Aristus]

1. I thought Dick Van Dyke was a Republican.

:shrug:

[Solo_in_MD]

2. I thought he was dead

[rman]

6. not in his back yard. nt

[progressivebydesign]

3. The Malibu coast is sooo beautiful. This is a shame.

There are stretches of Highway One where the road and the ocean are seamless... it's hard to describe but a gas terminal is NOT what you'd want to see there. At night, you can drive and see fishing boats trawling around in the water. It's horrid enough what they did to the coastline in Santa Barbara.. now this.

[XemaSab]

4. It'll be 14 miles offshore

And frankly, this smacks of NIMBYism.

Can anyone think of a better place for it off the coast? :shrug:

[rman]

5. "not in my backyard", hm?

Or not in a rich people's play ground, in this case.
But it's ok if it is in some poor country's jungle. Or at least in that case we don't know about it (although we could know about it) so we don't have to worry about it.