Up-and-coming Hollywood talent Ezra Miller will travel to the North Pole in early April to plant a ‘flag for the future’ on the seabed, as part of a major international campaign to protect the Arctic, amid a growing rush for the region’s natural resources.
The 20-year-old actor, who played the title role in We Need to Talk About Kevin and recently starred in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, will ski for up to eight hours per day and camp out in temperatures that could drop to -31°F. He will be joined by three other youth ambassadors from communities directly threatened by climate change, and will be cheered on by 2.7 million others who have backed a Greenpeace campaign to create a global sanctuary in the uninhabited area around the North Pole.
Once they arrive at the top of the world, the team will attempt to lower a special flag to the seabed, several miles below the surface. The flag’s design, chosen by Vivienne Westwood as part of an international competition, is intended to symbolise global unity and peace and will stand in defiance of previous attempts, most notably by Russia, to claim this region and its resources for any one country.
Announcing his participation in the trip, Ezra Miller said:
“I’ve never camped in the snow before and I’m definitely not an Arctic explorer, but I’m determined to plant this flag at the North Pole to declare it protected. I’m skiing with three young people want to create a sanctuary up there and fight climate change across the world.”
“The Arctic is melting in front of us, but right now people just see that as a chance to go up there and drill for more oil. It’s time to create a new story. Millions of people have signed their name at savethearctic.org to draw a line in the ice and say ‘this stops here’.”
Attached to the flag will be a special pod which contains over 2.7 million names of people who support the campaign including Paul McCartney, One Direction, and Cameron Diaz. This pod will be made of glass and titanium and is intended to rest on the seabed for decades to come.
Ezra recently completed a training course in Montreal, Canada, which required him to drag a sled containing over 170lbs of equipment, as well as learning to melt snow to cook freeze dried food. Once on the trip he will be expected to pitch camp, pack his own sled and pee in a bottle during the night.
In April the North Pole is bathed in nearly 24 hours of sunlight. The team will use GPS locators to find the actual pole itself, a task made harder by constantly shifting ice floes which can pull expeditions south as they walk north.
Ezra Miller continued:
“Even after months of training I’m still pretty terrified about skiing across the frozen Arctic Ocean. But I feel really honoured to have been asked to take part along with these amazing young people, and it’s a story that I will tell to my grandchildren once we’ve won this huge fight against climate change.”
Ezra will be joined by three other youth ambassadors with different connections to the Arctic:
- Renny Bijoux from the Seychelles, whose island nation could disappear due to rising sea levels.
- Josefina Skerk is from the Indigenous Sami community in Sweden and a member of the Sami parliament.
- Kiera Kolson is a young Tso’Tine-Gwich’in woman from Denendeh, Canada. She works to protect the Arctic with Greenpeace and defends the rights of Indigenous Peoples who have lived there for thousands of years.
