A "wave" of celebrity protest

LA Times:
Entertainers join surfers in targeting a massive floating terminal that would warm natural gas from Asia and Australia and pipe it ashore. The campaign to halt various proposals to build ccccccc 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.

Until Sunday, the proposed site for the 13-story terminal was thought to be closer to Oxnard, a former farm town best known for years as the butt of jokes by late-night talk show host Johnny Carson.

But maps show the terminal would be nearly as close to Malibu's city line, and celebrities have adopted it as a local issue.

Halle Berry, 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."

Beside the celebrities that hit the beach Sunday, other famous Malibu residents — including Barbra Streisand, Cher, Jamie Lee Curtis, Danny DeVito, Tom Hanks, Olivia Newton John and Martin Sheen — have signed a letter opposing the terminal that says it "poses significant and potentially irreversible negative impacts to our coast, our environment and to the health and safety of our families…. "

"The governor has not yet taken a position on any specific offshore natural gas terminal," said Darrel Ng, a spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is awaiting the outcome of various studies, Ng said, that put "each project through rigorous environmental and safety checks."