Greenpeace Targets Arco Building in Latest Protest

Displaying a giant banner protesting global warming, Greenpeace, the confrontational environmental group that has known better days, on Wednesday brought its campaign against oil exploration in the arctic to downtown Los Angeles.

Two activists climbed 13 stories up Atlantic Richfield’s 51-story building before unfurling a banner featuring a polar bear and reading “Arctic Oil: Global Warming, Chill the Drills.”

Greenpeace has chosen the bear as a symbol because of scientific concerns about the vulnerability of arctic wildlife to global warming as icebergs melt and the northern habitat heats up.

Five people were arrested at the demonstration, which caused police to temporarily close portions of two streets and snarled downtown traffic for hours as Fire Department personnel positioned huge air bags on the ground in case the climbers fell.

For Greenpeace, the demonstration was one of several recent protests, after a reorganization over the summer, that mark a reemphasis of the sort of dramatic direct action that made the group famous.

After a steep decline in U.S. membership that saw the rolls drop to 420,000 from more than 1 million in 1991, the organization earlier this year closed 10 field offices across the country. It also began calling attention to some of its less controversialwork--its efforts to develop a more energy-efficient car and its lobbying for tougher restrictions on the huge “factory” trawlers widely blamed for depleting worldwide fish populations.

But in September, members of the group launched a small flotilla of inflatable dinghies into Alaska’s Beaufort Sea in an effort to prevent a huge floating oil rig from moving to a drill site in coastal waters off the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Greenpeace has targeted Arco because of the company’s plans to look for oil just off the arctic refuge, the home of an extraordinary array of northern wildlife.

Although drilling operations could lead to spills or accidents that might harm bears, whales and birds, Greenpeace says its main concern is the long-term climate effects of oil dependency. The burning of fossil fuels is considered to be the primary way people contribute to global warming.

Al Greenstein, a company spokesman, said that Greenpeace was wrong to equate arctic oil drilling with global warming.

“It’s not a production issue. It’s a matter of consumption,” Greenstein said. “As long as people choose to depend on oil, and we think they will for decades to come, the choice is whether to import oil or develop our own sources.”

The five Los Angeles protesters were arrested on suspicion of trespassing.