The (deputy) director's cut

If you ever hear Senator Kennedy from Massachusetts say he is an environmentalist and cares about global warming, the oxygen he’s wasting on the empty rhetoric is nothing more than a bunch of hot air.  His latest effort to kill the proposed wind project off Nantucket Sound – 130 windmills that would be the first offshore wind facility in the US and would provide 75% of the Cape’s energy needs – takes the cake in the category of back room deal making and good ole boy networking.  Whereas Kennedy has done a nice teflon routine to appear unconnected to this latest development by stealthily working behind the scenes, it has his smell all over it.

This past Friday, a congressional conference committee negotiating the final language of the Coast Guard Re-Authorization Bill agreed to give the governor of Massachusetts veto power over the Cape Wind project. The amendment was introduced to the committee – after the bill had been passed in the house and senate without this language – by Congressman Young (R-AK).  Is it just me, or is anyone else wondering why a Congressman from Alaska would go out on a limb to help kill a wind farm off Cape Cod? What’s Kennedy going to do for him?  Pretty smart of Teddy to get a conservative republican from a distant, remote state to do his bidding, thereby adding to the teflon effect.  If you want to dig down to find out what’s really going on here, better bring your waders.

For the sake of argument, let’s suspend logic and make the assumption that this isn’t politically motivated, that there actually might be a good reason for this amendment.  If this really had anything to do with the coast guard (as the title of the bill implies), why not give the decision making authority to them?  We’d also have to ignore the fact that the amendment’s language conflicts with the congressional intent of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The Energy Policy Act directs the Secretary of Interior to develop, in consultation with the Coast Guard and other agencies, “any necessary regulations.”  The new provision undermines that process, which has only just begun.

So, a congressman from Alaska pens an amendment that gives full veto authority to a governor from a state he has nothing to do with.  Instead of the coast guard or the Mineral Management Service, the regulatory agency in charge of proposed offshore wind farms, making the call, the governor of Massachusetts can simply say “Nah, it kind of screws up the view for a small group of rich people.  I think I’ll take a pass”.

Let’s not forget that one of the most vocal and visible opponents of the Cape Wind Project has been Bobby Kennedy, who had crafted a reputation as an environmentalist and global warming champion until the conversion from theory to practice meant a state-of-the-art wind farm off the horizon from his summer home.  With that in mind, it’s no big surprise that one of the most influential democrats in Congress, who shares the same family name and summer home setting, would also use his considerable weight to kill the project behind the scenes.

Thought that title would catch your interest.  It’s a loaded phrase, given its reference to a controversial issue rife with environmental, cultural, political and socioeconomic implications.  That issue, of course, is pirate fishing.

What?

That’s right – pirate fishing.  Off the West Coast of Africa, we have found and documented a fleet of ships that are fishing illegally, stealing fish from the poorest countries in the world and selling them at a considerable profit to wealthy markets in Europe and North America.  The fish are caught by ships that are barely seaworthy, with horrid onboard living conditions for the exploited crews that man them. And the operation hides and launders its illicit cargo by illegally transferring the fish from the pirate vessels to a large refrigerated vessel called a reefer (ah ha!).  It is these reefers that covertly take the cargo to wealthy European markets, by which they make their way to the rest of the world.  It is madness, in every sense of the word.

And Greenpeace is on the scene to smoke them out.  

You know, bring them out into the open, so they can no longer hide.

Our work on pirate fishing is part of Greenpeace’s Defending Our Oceans tour.  Our ship the Esperanza is on a year-long expedition, with the purpose of drawing attention to the myriad threats that currently face our high seas around the world.  It started with our work in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, where we took on the Japanese whaling fleet for two months as part of our effort to end commercial whaling once and for all.  Speaking of which, we just won a significant victory for the whales, as the three largest companies who fund the whaling fleet announced last week that they plan to divest.  We have since moved to the West Coast of Africa, where we are confronting these pirate fishing operations and bringing in authorities who have the power to stop it.

Pirate fishing poses considerable consequences to the health of our oceans, as every year millions of fish are caught outside the regulations designed to protect them.  The human rights implications are also huge, from the crews essentially working in servitude in abysmal conditions on ships that are death traps, to the fact that the poorest nations in the world are losing roughly $100 million each year in stolen fish.  Making matters worse is the fact that the countries in whose waters this is happening don’t have the capacity to effectively police the situation.  They need the help of governments from around the world with the resources to help, especially in places like Europe where the fish get laundered and shipped to other destinations.  These governments could go a long ways towards ending this exploitative practice by cracking down on illegal fishing vessels and operations in their ports, and making sure the companies involved are prosecuted.

Maybe we just need to phrase it differently to spark the interest of western countries and international authorities to take this on.  Tell ‘em large reefer ships are on the way to their ports, with holds stuffed to the gills in illegal substances.