Greenpeace

Jamie Woolley is a web editor for Greenpeace UK who is in Copenhagen helping cover the UN climate talks. He wrote this blog after news broke that access to the conference center would be dramatically restricted for nongovernmental organization's (NGO's) delegations.

My COP15 badge. Bit useless now...

Since early last week, rumours have been flying round the Copenhagen negotiations about what would happen as we got closer to the arrival of the heads of state. Then a couple of days ago it was confirmed: access the conference centre would become more and more restricted for non-governmental organisations such as Greenpeace, and today was the start of those restrictions. We only have a few ID badges to go around the team and we'll have fewer with each passing day.

Over-subscription (it's been getting really crowded) and security have been used to justify the move, and I can't deny it's frustrating that our team is split between the Bella Centre and offices in the city centre. But the real concern is what it will allow the world leaders to do (or rather, not do) come the end of the negotiations on Friday.

Restricting access to huge chunks of civil society is not far removed from closing the door on a smoky gentlemen's club, and the transparent negotiation process we've been demanding will become shrouded in secrecy. With a nod, a handshake and a photo call, these guys (and they are mostly guys) could seal a deal which is a long, long way from the fair, ambitions and binding one we need.

Worse would be if they came out of their private rooms and span a great line about the wonderful deal they've struck but in reality, if you read the small print, it does little bits here and there, but the bigger picture will be missing and it'll be pretty much business as usual. If that's the case, they need to know we won't accept their spin and their greenwash will be exposed.

It's a concern but they're on their way to Copenhagen because we demanded they attend. The Global Day of Action at the weekend showed the worldwide support for that FAB deal and we have to keep pushing them for exactly that. We don't need to be inside the Bella Centre to do that.

 

Willie, from Greenpeace UK, blogs from Brazil, where he is attending the ICCAT meeting.

The vultures were literally circling overhead as we approached the ICCAT meeting venue this morning... so something is on its last legs.

So, with just one day of the ICCAT meeting left, it’s time to see what has been achieved here this week. The short answer is ‘not a lot’. Despite a week of meetings, including extra, lengthy, evening sessions, virtually nothing has been decided on or agreed yet. Decisions on quotas for fish like bluefin tuna, protection of sharks and seabirds, are being left until the last minute, and all need to be discussed on the last day.

This wouldn’t be so frustrating if the week’s discourse had been more constructive. Don’t get me wrong, undoubtedly there are many at the ICCAT meeting who are working very hard and very long hours, but the system is so fundamentally flawed that it gives us little hope for very positive outcomes.

Little wonder, perhaps, that articles in today's (London) Times and New York Times poured a great deal of scorn on the whole process.

For days we have heard over and over how ICCAT must regain credibility, and for days we have seen some meaningless ping-pong across the tables as countries blamed each other whilst coming up with perfectly valid reasons why they could not be blamed themselves. It’s akin to a class of school kids explaining in turn where their homework is – you know the kind of thing, ‘dog ate it’, ‘mum put it in the washing machine’, ‘it blew away on the way to school’. Individually every excuse seems plausible. Collectively it means ICCAT has a very, very long way to go.

Last night saw, what was in ICCAT terms, a major step, with countries accepting letters of admonishment when they had not complied with the conservation and enforcement measures they had undertaken to do. A letter home from teacher, if you like. To us, this is pretty lame, but to them it is the first time countries are acknowledging formally that they have not done what they should. Trouble is, of course, the parties to ICCAT are here representing their own governments, and quite possibly have a note from their mum too. Personally, I blame the parents.

All this complying through gritted teeth is hugely frustrating. This week we have seen bizarre acceptances of others wrong-doing (and praise for them admitting it) and even some tacit derogations for a couple of countries to do what they want on hugely controversial issues. Remember driftnets, anyone? Fancy killing a few endangered species?

Ultimately, my impression from this meeting is to feel despondent, and I am even more convinced that there need to be a fundamental reforms of the way we ‘manage’ (and I use the word quite scornfully) our oceans. This gradual way of improving the systems we have bit by bit, issue by issue, year by year, just is not enough. The damage we are doing is happening far faster than our willingness to change.

So yes, we need drastic measures. That means setting large areas off-limits to fishing as Marine Reserves, and the bigger the better. It also means banning certain ways of fishing, and banning fishing for certain species altogether. And it means actually enforcing things too, with legal and financial consequences.

If we don’t start doing this on a huge scale, we will have lost not only our credibility, and our homework, but many irreplaceable species and livelihoods too.

 

Willie, from Greenpeace UK, blogs from Brazil, where he is attending the ICCAT meeting.

So, here in Brazil, the game is on. At the end of yesterday’s session the parties around the table at the ICCAT meeting were asked what their priorities were for conserving bluefin tuna. One by one they made positive murmurings about wanting to 'follow the scientific recommendations', and enforce compliance with them. They all pretty much said they want to see illegal fishing tackled. No rocket science there, and you would be forgiven for wondering why they have not done those things already!

More importantly there were also some hints as to how low some countries would go in terms of a quota, with several actually suggesting the possibility of closing the fishery. To you and me that may be a no-brainer. To many of them, it is a seismic shift.

Now, we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves here. There is a lot of horse-trading to be done behind closed stable doors. And it's worth noting that the talk about closing the fishery is just for one year – which could well be a very convenient way of avoiding bluefin being subject to an international trade ban under CITES.

Greenpeace, and other conservation organizations here, won’t settle for that – and we are reminding the participants at ICCAT that the only credible thing they can do is close this fishery.

And it seems they desperately want to regain some credibility here. You can understand that, after all ICCAT was branded an 'international disgrace'  by an independent review. The spotlight is on them because of what they have allowed to happen to bluefin, and the bureaucrats who attend these meetings really don’t like that. Delegate after delegate has talked about the need for ICCAT to claw back credibility, conveniently ignoring that this is a situation their own bad judgement in the past has gotten them into.

From an observer’s point of view here there is much to be cynical about. This is a dysfunctional meeting in a tropical paradise, at a resort whose very construction has caused disruption and problems for the local coastline in Brazil, with gala dinners, cocktail receptions, and a self-congratulating bunch of faceless bureaucrats mismanaging species, fisheries, and livelihoods.

Yesterday was an eye opener, with some impassioned and stirring interventions (particularly from some of the African delegations) requesting stronger action to protect stocks of fish in their waters. At several points I wanted to stand up, cheer and applaud. But those heartfelt pleas were met by some cynical process point-scoring by delegations on the other side of the table, immediately filling me with despair.

There is still a long way to go here.

Willie, from Greenpeace UK, blogs from Brazil, where he is attending the ICCAT meeting.

As I write this, I'm sitting in the plenary room of the ICCAT meeting, whilst Charles Clover's film 'The End of The Line' is being screened. This in itself is a great coup.

In a memorable scene from the film, whilst attending a previous ICCAT meeting, Clover himself chastized the bureaucrats in that meeting for setting irresponsibly high quotas that ignored scientific advice. In his words they were '…negotiating with biology. And you just can't do that, and expect to see the biology survive'.

It's a stunningly simple thing. Fishing is harvesting wild animals, and that can only happen if there are healthy populations of those animals, which in turn means healthy ecosystems to support them. And you simply can't take out more fish than is being replenished. Fish, like any other animals, are only a renewable resource up to a point!

 

 

Organisations like ICCAT, which are Fisheries Management Organizations, theoretically exist to make sure that the countries involved are managing the fisheries, OUR fisheries, effectively. But there's a catch. To you and me this would mean setting sensible quotas and not trashing fish stocks. But many of the people involved in ICCAT and other such organizations, seem to think their job is to squeeze every last fish out of the oceans, and keep their fishing industries happy. So when it comes down to setting quotas, it doesn't quite make sense.

ICCAT gets its own scientists to give it information on the stocks for which it is responsible (tuna, swordfish, sailfish and sharks). It then uses those to decide on quotas, which is a game of political haggling until an agreement is reached. Note that I said it 'uses' those. It isn't bound by them, and sometimes it just ignores them altogether. In fact they routinely set quotas vastly higher than the upper limits of what the scientists suggest would be safe especially on lucrative species like bluefin.

This is utter madness.

This year with huge amounts of public pressure, bad press, and celebrity outrage at the state of bluefin, ICCAT members are all talking very sincerely about setting catch levels that 'follow the science'. Surely they should be bound by the scientific recommendations – otherwise, what's the point of having them? Surely it should not take campaigns and catastrophic stock collapses to make ICCAT see that?

The starting point for ICCAT, and other fisheries management organizations should be the science, and the quotas shouldn't exceed that. But that in itself isn't even enough, as the New York Times has ably pointed out this week.  We are doing lots of things to our oceans, trashing other species as bycatch and altering ecosystems in ways we can't imagine. So we should be much more precautionary than the science suggests, especially when we factor in illegal fishing activity (which, as we know, is rampant for the profitable bluefin).

ICCAT has its work cut out. It has been dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that it has mismanaged bluefin tuna. And that's just the tip of the fishy iceberg. Most of the species under ICCAT's control are large predatory species, and globally they have declined by 90% over the last few decades. 

No wonder ICCAT is uncomfortable that the world is watching them this week.  But it remains to be seen if they will be shamed into usefulness. I'll keep you posted.

 

Hikmat Soeriatanuwijaya is a campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia who is currently at the Climate Defenders Camp in Indonesia.

I am now on the peatland area of Semenanjung Kampar, half an hour away by boat from Greenpeace's Climate Defenders Camp.

As far as I can see are bushes, grasses, several trees, and bushes again. Man, this is not the rainforest. Here I am, at Semenanjung Kampar, which has more than 1.7 million acres of forest and stores more than 2 billion tons of carbon. Oh yeah, I remember now, the latest data said that almost half of Semenanjung Kampar forest, over 740,000 acres, has already been destroyed for plantations.

And this area must be one of  those 740,000 acres we are talking about. The peatland on this particular area is damaged because of the several canals built a couple years ago for illegal logging activity. Now the logging activity is stopped, but the canals remain, draining and damaging the surrounding peatland each and every day.

In one canal, I see about 50 Greenpeace activists and local community members working hard to build a dam. Under the command of Petteri, the dam is looking good. They have already finished the first wall and continue to build the next one.


Greenpeace activists and local community members work on a dam to stop the draining of Indonesia's peatlands. © Greenpeace /Will Rose

“Greenpeace activists and local communities are working together to build this dam and restore the ecosystem of this place,” said Petteri.

Building the dam in this canal will stop the greenhouse gas emissions and restore this peatland to the normal condition of the rainforest. It's big work, and a mighty big act of hope considering this peatland has already been severely destroyed.

But it is not a Mission Impossible! What’s the point of planning the mission if we already feel it’s impossible to achieve the goal?

Just call it Mission Possible, or even better, Mission of Hope.


Jesus Fernandez from Greenpeace Spain and other Greenpeace activists work on the dam. © Greenpeace /Will Rose


Local community members work with Greenpeace activists to build the dam. © Greenpeace /Will Rose

Because no matter how hard it is, there’s always hope. Scientists say that what Greenpeace and the community are working on here really can restore the condition of the surrounding peatland.

“Much of the carbon released from peatland swamps is the result of draining so the land, or the logs, can be used,” says Professor Jonotoro, a peatlands expert. Professor Jonotoro has been joining Greenpeace efforts to stop deforestation for quite some time. This friendly man is also very concerned about the future of Semenanjung Kampar forest.

We stand in the river bank while the damming work is still in process. Jonotoro is the right person to talk to get to know more about the peatland situation. He is one of the peatland experts from Indonesia's Ministry of Forestry, and a lecturer at Lancang Kuning University in Pekan Baru.

According to Jonotoro, peatland is made up of a store of waterlogged and semi-decomposed vegetation, which squelches underfoot. The deeper the peatland - it can stretch to a depth of more than 15m - the more carbon it holds. “As the water level drops, more and more of the stock of carbon is released into the atmosphere,” he explains. This not only takes a toll on biodiversity, but if set on fire dry peatland can burn for weeks. The fire can even be extinguished on the surface only to continue burning underground and reappear the next day.

“By building this dam, we aim to restore the peatland to the rainforest condition, so the ecosystem is able to thrive here again,” Jonotoro explained.

"So Professor," I asked him, "can you tell me just how much this area has been damaged? And when this damming project is finished, how long until the restoration process begins?"

Jonotoro paused and looked at me sharply. I was afraid he no longer wanted to explain further because I’ve already asked a lot of questions since we departed from the camp. But no, he grabbed his field hat and said: “Come with me!”

We walked deeper inside the area. Have to be careful because peatland is very unstable. Bustar, our Forest Campaigner, fell down when we crossed a wood bridge. After 20 minutes of walking, we arrived at an area surrounded by tall grasses. There was a pipe there and Jonotoro checked it by putting wood tools in it.

“It’s pretty dry. This place is losing the water table,” he said. He pulled his measuring tools out and showed me: 50 centimeters.

“The best condition for peatland is 20 to 0 centimeters. When this peatland can achieve that condition, the environment can be restored. Usually, we can see the effect on the ecosystem at around three months. The result will depends on many things. But when the dam is built, we will definitely get positive results.”

Yes, Professor, we will get results. Because the dam is built, the water table is rebuilding, and we are restoring Indonesia's peatlands!
 

- Hikmat

Hikmat Suriatanwijaya is a media campaigner at Greenpeace's Climate Defenders Camp in Indonesia.

No flashlights. No red carpets. Don’t talk about fancy five-star hotel because here we don’t even have a proper toilet.
 
But Inglourious Basterds superstar Mélanie Laurent seems like she's really enjoying life at Greenpeace's Climate Defenders Camp, in the heart of Indonesia's tropical forest, Semenanjung Kampar, Riau Province.


Oct. 30, 2009 - Mélanie Laurent, who stars in Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie ‘Inglourious Basterds’, in the Indonesian Rainforest with Greenpeace speaking out against forest destruction and climate change in the lead up to the UN Copenhagen Climate Summit in December 2009. ©Will Rose/Greenpeace
 
“I miss my comfortable bed, though. But I really am enjoying my stay here,” said Mélanie in the middle of a sunny morning conversation.
 
We had just finished breakfast. Everyone was gathering in the main area of the camp. Not luxurious but we've got everything that we need: Coffee, milk, bread, fried rice, and friends.
 
About twenty activists were preparing their gear for the damming activity. They were willing and ready to pull another hard and tiring day of work. Mlanie had already prepared for the trip to Kerumutan Conservation Area to see the beauty of the untouched peatland forest on this beautiful Sunday morning.
 
Kerumutan is two hours by boat. I am sure Mélanie will enjoy the surroundings. But mother nature's beauty is not always the scenery for her trip to Sumatra. Mélanie has been on this Greenpeace trip since last Friday, and she has witnessed a lot of horrible forest destruction.
 
On our way to Kampar Peninsula last Friday, we stopped at Pangkalan Bunut, at PT, the Arara Abadi concession area. Mélanie was just stunned seeing the massive peatland forest being destroyed by canals and being burned for land clearing.
 
“It’s horrible. I am really sad to see how this once beautiful forest now more looks like a war zone,” she said. She couldn’t stop capturing this massive destruction with her digital camera.
 
Mélanie understands that forests are the lungs of the world and shouldn’t be destroyed like that. The 26 year old actress wants that to stop, and she knows that Greenpeace's Climate Defenders Camp is here to stop deforestation.
 
“I am impressed with all of Greenpeace's efforts here. What makes me more impressed is the spirit, I’ve visited the dam-building activity and see everyone working really hard. But I’ve never seen anyone looking down, everyone was working with passion and the spirit is high.”
 
Through the sparks in her beautiful eyes I can see that she really meant what she said. And I believe when she said she really likes the life at the camp. Blistering heat, bugs and mosquitos can not keep her from enjoying herself. For the past two days Mélanie has mixed with all the activists and local communities at the camp. Having lunch and dinner together, sharing the beautiful scenery of Kampar River, even hanging out and singing together during night time.
 
“In this camp, everyone treated everybody with respect. I am glad everybody treated me the same, not as an actress. Without flashlights and public attention, I can really enjoy myself here,” Mélanie smiled.
 
No flashlights and no red carpet for Mélanie. Just a lot of friends who share the common interest and objective: to stop deforestation!

-Hikmat

Karli is the lead campaigner onboard the Esperanza for the Defending Our Pacific tour.

Last week, we found no less than four Taiwanese fishing vessels on the high seas in the space of just three days. We took action against two of them (Mike wrote about those vessels and the actions we did in this post). Though this makes it seem as if these vessels and their crews are our adversaries in the fight to save the Pacific tuna stocks and close the four high seas pockets to all fishing, that is not the case. We were not there to try and tell these captains what to do, but rather to give them the information their employers might not be giving him, to appeal to their sense of morality, and to ask them to stop plundering the Pacific.


Greenpeace activists ask the captain of the Ming Jhy Fwu No. 16 to haul in his long-line after giving him information about our campaign and the state of Pacific fisheries. © Paul Hilton/Greenpeace

What we do oppose is the corporations they work for, which are colluding with the Taiwanese government – just as so many other corporations are colluding with governments around the world – to trap them and their crews into economic circumstances that only benefit the corporation, while also blatantly disregarding the plight of Pacific fisheries and the theft of fish right out of Pacific islanders’ waters.

Our adversaries are also governments, like that of Taiwan, that continue to ignore the warnings of scientists about Pacific fish stocks and instead allow new fishing vessels to be built and sent out to chase after fewer and fewer fish. One of the ships we encountered last week, the Ming Jhy Fwu No. 16, was just built in 2006 – at a time when we were already aware that overfishing in the Pacific was having dire consequences.

The captain of the Ming Jhy Fwu No. 16 seemed like a thoughtful guy. As Mike described, he sat right down and read the campaign literature we gave him with genuine interest. We are not against this captain or his crew. If anything, we have total sympathy for him and are glad to be on his side.

By allowing this vessel, and many, many others like it, to leave the ship-building yards and join the already bloated fleet in the Pacific, countries like Taiwan are locking their own fishing industry – and people like the captain of the Ming Jhy Fwu No. 16 – into a vicious cycle whereby they must fish to make a return on what they have invested in their fishing ship and gear. If governments do not take responsibility, the fishing industry will simply fish itself to death.

Though Taiwan has reduced its fishing capacity in the past years, they still build more vessels and then simply get them flagged under foreign nations. But it's usually still owned by the same owners. The fishing industry is always trying to find and exploit loopholes to avoid national, regional and international regulations. This irresponsible behavior on the part of the fishing industry compromises Taiwan's efforts.

The Taiwanese government and the regional fisheries management organization have to take a much stricter stand on the continued introduction of new capacity into the region and drastically reduce the masses of overcapacity of the fleets that currently exists.

It’s not just Taiwan that has such recent additions to its fleets. In fact, you might recall that on the first leg of the tour we exposed a refueling operation involving a brand new “super-seiner,” a massive fishing vessel with nets large enough to encircle whole schools of tuna and all the other marine life that is swimming with them. That ship, the American Legacy, only left the shipyard for its maiden voyage in 2008.

This is a cycle that we need to break, and this year is going to be a deciding moment for the Pacific. Through the Defending Our Pacific expedition, Greenpeace has again provided evidence that fishing in the high seas is undermining management and threatening the Pacific. We’ve also demonstrated that transshipment by long-line vessels and the use of fish aggregating devices (FADs) by purse seiners are enabling the plunder of marine life.

It’s time for those countries that want a future for their fishing fleets to stand up and be counted alongside the Pacific island countries in their call for the high seas to be closed to fishing.

- Karli

Four courageous, inspirational women from around the world are in New York right now to urge President Obama and heads of state from over 100 countries to take action against climate change. These women have either lost their homes, jobs or food supply to flooding, droughts and other disasters. But they are taking action to rebuild their lives and they are now speaking out for their communities - their family. They are from Mississippi, Uganda, Papua New Guinea and the Cook Islands in the Pacific. In facing incredibly desperate situations - all of them have developed a strong voice for action climate change.

 

 

Mary Ann Mayo was the webbie onboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza during the first leg of the Defending Our Pacific 2009 tour.

The last refuge of the last relatively healthy stocks of tuna is found right here in the Pacific. Scientists have been warning for years that the fishing pressure on Pacific tuna must be reduced, yet the Taiwanese-owned, American-flagged super-seiner the American Legacy left the shipyard in Taiwan only last year. Amidst warnings of overfishing and calls for restraint, this brand new super-seiner joined the already vast number of fishing vessels out at sea that are chasing fewer and fewer fish.


© Greenpeace/Paul Hilton

The number 8 in the Chinese culture is considered a lucky number, as the word for eight sounds similar to the word for "prosper" or "wealth." I am pretty sure the Chen family, which owns a network of Taiwanese companies, had this in mind when they included the triple 8 in the name of their fuel tanker, the MV Fong Seong 888. Good fortune and prosperity. However, the ship's high seas activities mean bad fortune and poverty for Pacific nations.

The MV Fong Seong 888 was refueling the purse seiner American Legacy in the high seas, near the waters of Kiribati, when we found them.


© Greenpeace/Paul Hilton

The ownership of both vessels links back to the Chen family. Even though these two ships share an owner, they fly under two different flags: the Fong Seong 888 is flagged to Panama while the American Legacy is a US-flagged purse seiner.

Strange to hear, you might say, that these Taiwanese-owned ships are using another country’s flag? The practice of using or flying the flag of another country other than the country of ownership is what is known as ‘flags of convenience’ (FOC). This is done for many different reasons, including cheap registration fees, low or almost no taxes, and the freedom to employ cheap labor. But to the fishing industry, flying flags of convenience also makes it possible to artificially increase the fishing quota from what is assigned to individual nations. And what does this mean? They can fish more than they would be allowed to if they flew the flag of their real country.

Under an agreement called the US Treaty, the United States is entitled to fish in the waters of 16 Pacific nations with up to 40 purse seine vessels. In recent years, the country has had fewer boats than that, but new vessels are being added, flying the US flag even though they're linked to a major shipbuilding and fishing conglomerate in Taiwan. Fresh from the biggest shipyard in Taiwan and flying the flag of the country with the greatest access to Pacific tuna resources comes the American Legacy. What hope do the tuna have with an alliance like that pitched against them?

Now let’s turn to the Fong Seong 888, one of many tankers operating in the Pacific. These tankers, along with the refrigerated “reefer” vessels that transfer fish, enable fishing fleets to stay at sea for extended periods. Without having to come into port to refuel, take on supplies, and land the fish they have caught, it is much more difficult for authorities to monitor tuna catches in the region. These supply vessels open a gateway for illegally caught fish to leave the region untraced – they are literally fueling and fostering the continued plundering of tuna from the Pacific.

To show our protest for this shameful practice, our Greenpeace activists painted "Fueling Plunder" and "Tuna Plunder" on the hull of the MV Fong Seong 888. It was one of the fastest ship painting actions I have ever seen! And with good cause: having already finished their refueling, we barely had time to paint the campaign message when the purse seiner, MV American Legacy, broke away from the starboard side of Fong Seong 888, and headed away at speed.


© Greenpeace/Paul Hilton

Maybe they were afraid we would "dirty" the fresh new paint on their hull. They should be worried that they're onboard a brand new industrial fishing vessel, which has added to the bloated fishing capacity in the region even though scientists are warning of overfishing and countries are agreeing to show restraint.

As I look back at the 3 weeks we have been here in the international waters of the Western Pacific, we have come across FADs, documented an illegal transshipment at sea, confiscated longlines and escorted several vessels out of the high seas (read all about it here). This latest deplorable activity - a brand new fishing vessel being refueled at sea - was perfectly legal, yet illustrates the problem of countries building yet more ships when there are already too many. It also raises the issue of flag state responsibility, and the curse of refueling and transshipment at sea. It is amazing just how many loopholes these companies find through which to carry out their operations. If only the fishing nets were this full of loopholes – I doubt that a single tuna would be caught!

With all the resources at their disposal and the capacity to circumvent, exploit and abuse bans and treaties, what will it take to stop these distant fishing nations from robbing the Pacific nations of their own resource?

While our activists painted the hull of the Fong Seong 888, I was watching all the activity from the bridge. As the purse seiner American Legacy broke away, the horizon where she was headed was dark with rain clouds, while amazingly at the stern of the Esperanza, the sun was shining at its brightest! In my mind’s eye I could see the two roads that the Pacific fisheries are facing at the moment: one heading towards a dark future of the continued plunder of the Pacific until this ocean is fished to death, while the other holds a bright future of a healthy and sustainable tuna fisheries.

Which road will the world take?

And America, which would you like to see as your “Legacy” for the Pacific?

-Mary Ann

Greenpeace activists have already made the point by occupying a Shell tar sands mine in Alberta that "climate leaders don't buy tar sands."

Because Canada is America's largest supplier of oil, the elephant in the Oval Office, when Harper and Obama met at the White House in Washington on September 16th, was Alberta's tar sands.

The tar sands are the reason that Canada has become the largest single national supplier of oil to the United States – exceeding Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria.  The tar sands are Canada's fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions... production of synthetic crude oil from tar sands results in three to five times more greenhouse gas than conventional crude.

In parliament on September 15th, Stephen Harper said that he is committed to "clean development" of the tar sands, but the reality is that there is no such thing – the tar sands produce the world’s dirtiest oil.

The official statement from Harper/Obama meeting contained no mention of tar sands; no mention of caps on greenhouse gas emission reductions for the medium-term (2020); and no indication of any progress on national or international emissions trading programs. Yet they had the temerity to say “they reiterated the urgency of taking aggressive action to combat climate change”.

The only justification for any mention of climate and energy was the release of a document entitled: “US-Canada Clean Energy Dialogue Action Plan” [PDF].

This document claims that "The United States and Canada have announced ambitious emissions reduction goals for 2050..." That’s simply not true. The Canadian target for 2050 is only 50 to 60 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050. Scientists have called for a minimum reduction 80 per cent by industrial countries, and as close to zero as possible.

The Harper government's target for 2020 is only 3 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. The KYOTOplus Campaign, supported by Greenpeace and more than 80 other Canadian organizations, calls for a minimum reduction of 25 per cent.

The main thrust of the so-called “Action Plan” is the promotion of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). The oil and gas industry touts CCS as the silver bullet solution to the massive greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands and from coal-fired electricity. There are only four test sites in the entire world that are actually sequestering carbon dioxide underground. Aside from numerous technical and environmental problems, we can be sure of only one thing — CCS is prohibitively expensive and can only be realized with massive government subsidies... therefore the Clean Energy Dialog!

By pushing Carbon Capture and Storage, the Clean Energy Dialogue is only putting a fig leaf over the huge environmental impacts of the tar sands. It will ultimately be too expensive and come too late to make a serious impact on the climate crisis. Worse, the huge expenditures on the CCS will prevent investment in the truly effective solutions for global warming – renewable energy and energy efficiency. The Alberta government has already committed about $2 billion in provincial taxpayer subsidies to CCS, and the Harper government has committed about $1 billion... of OUR money.

The bottom line is that the Harper government has refused to take the climate crisis seriously. The fate of the earth is going to be decided at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. It’s time to get serious.

Dave Martin is the Climate and Energy Coordinator for Greenpeace Canada

 

Mary Ann Mayo is the webbie onboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, which is currently in the South Pacific for the Defending Our Pacific 2009 tour.

Just two days ago, the Japanese purse seiner, Fukuichi Maru, was pulling in its purse seine net, heavy with freshly caught tuna, when we found them fishing in area 2 of the Pacific high seas. Floating in the water and attached to the ship's left side (or port side as we refer to it in nautical terms), was a FAD made of a very long log with a radio beacon on it. It was the first time that we caught a fishing vessel in the act of purse seining from a FAD.


You can see the FAD on the left of this pic. © Greenpeace/Paul Hilton

Seeing this made me shake my head in disbelief. There is a two-month ban on FADs declared by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Conference (WCPFC) currently in place. But a major loophole in the ban is being exploited by Japan to continue their high seas plunder of the Pacific. (*See note below.)

The Fukuichi Maru finished its hauling operations and headed away. Two of our inflatables caught up with the plundering purse seiner. Upon reaching the ship, we delivered a letter and information about our campaign on tuna in Japanese. Two of our Pacific Activists, Anna Jitoko and Josefa Nasegui, showed their indignation by unfurling banners reading "No return from overfishing" and "Marine Reserves Now."

© Greenpeace/Gabriel Vianna

Witnessing this Japanese purse seiner using a FAD to catch tuna makes me feel sad, given how many of our global stocks of tuna are already in a state of collapse. The northern bluefin tuna population is severely overfished and has possibly already collapsed, and some Pacific tuna are in danger of heading the same way. The FAD ban was put in place to protect the tuna from being fished out during their August-September spawning season. But in the last two weeks, we have seen no less than ten FADs scattered in the Pacific high seas.

It seems that despite the laws that are in place, Japan is still using loopholes to get around this restriction. There are no boundaries too great, no territories too taboo, and no laws too strict, to prevent them from their high seas plunder in the Pacific.



The sea may appear to be as vast as we see them, but they have lost much of the rich marine life that helps sustain life on Earth. Like every resource that we use, tuna is also finite. If we do not manage this resource properly, and respect the laws in place to prevent its abuse and safeguard its very survival, our seas will just be a great big tub of salt water, empty of life.

Tuna is a resource that is NOT for one country to plunder. Why should one country continue to fish using fish aggregating devices — plundering not just tuna but juvenile fish and sharks, turtles and other marine life — while every other country is bound by a ban on this wasteful form of fishing? What hope can we expect for the tuna to survive? And what chance can the Pacific nations have for their own survival when these distant fishing nations outfish them of their own resource?

It reminds me of low-budget travelers who snap up budget travel packages advertised on the newspapers back home: FLY NOW! Pay Later! Satisfy instant gratification and worry about the cost later. Here we have it: FISH NOW! pay later! But for low-budget travelers that get carried away, it's their own credit cards that suffer. And when we are talking about fishing a shared regional resource, any one country's excess has impacts for all.

Japan is the world's largest consumer of tuna and if Japan and other countries continue to relentlessly fish tuna to the point of collapse and continually make a mockery of such laws, not only will sushi trains grind to a halt, but it will be the end of the line for Pacific nations: the loss of a vital resource and the end of a way of life.

- Mary Ann


* Paragraph 15 of the WCPFC’s Conservation Management Measure which sets the conditions of the ban provides such exemptions as follows: “As an alternative to the high seas FAD closure…members may adopt measures to reduce their catch by weight of bigeye tuna in the purse seine fishery in the area between 20°N and 20°S by a minimum of 10 percent relative to 2001-2004 average levels…. This alternative shall only be available to members identified by the Commission in advance as having demonstrated a functioning capacity to implement such measures in an effective and transparent manner including through: an established and functioning port monitoring program that allows monitoring of bigeye landings for each trip by each vessel; a commitment to carry on board observers from the Regional Observer Program….”

 

Mary Ann Mayo is currently the webbie onboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza. You can read the posts we've already put up (here and here) featuring the amazing work the crew on board the Esperanza is doing as part of the Defending Our Pacific 2009 tour.

I just wanted to share this video with you, as well as a backgrounder on fish aggregating devices (FADs), which you can find below the video.

A Growing FAD

A few days back, we hauled on-board a Fish Aggregating Device (FAD), a device used by purse seiners to attract tuna. A lot of marine life was spared from certain fishy death that day.

We were pleased to see that our FAD expose generated positive comments (after all, we are in the middle of the two-month period when FADs are banned in this area of the Pacific). We also received a few inquiries on how FADs really work. Why are fish attracted to them? What are they made of? Are tuna the only fish that aggregate around these FADs?

So we ´fished´ out some FAD facts and figures. Our ‘haul’ revealed a pretty grim picture. For every 10 kilos of tuna caught, 1 kilogram will be unwanted catch, consisting of juvenile tuna, sharks, turtles, rays and other marine species. In 2005, that amounted to a staggering 100,000 tonnes of by-catch!

In addition, a recent study revealed that these deadly fish magnets affect the behavior of fish, essentially over-riding their natural instincts and even distracting them from their normal migratory paths.

To give you, our readers, a better understanding and additional information about FADs I’ve asked Genevieve Quirk, Greenpeace Oceans Campaigner based in Australia, to explain. Genevieve attended the meeting of the Pacific Tuna Commission scientists last month, and here she shares with us some insights on what transpired at the meeting, and her take on FADs:

Bad, bad FAD

It was astonishing to bear witness to the dirty laundry of the scientific meeting of the Pacific Tuna Commission.

Huge industrial fleets, having fished out their own waters, are now plundering the Pacific. Nets the size of city blocks are used to haul in schools of tuna. High-tech equipment now makes finding fish easy and longlines can extend over 100km!

In this type of fishery, huge amounts of bycatch are caught and thrown back dead or dying. These include endangered sharks, turtles and seabirds.

What a combination — record catches and a projected failure of the conservation measures for the Western and Central Pacific Fishery. It is scandalous that the tuna fishery recorded its highest catch on record this year, when the scientists have been recommending cuts to the overfishing in this fishery for years.

After hours of argument the scientists agreed that 34-50% cut in fishing is needed to protect bigeye tuna stocks. The biggest cut ever!

The raging debate was, however, quiet at one point in the meeting. The scientists were in awe of the research showing climate change would seriously decrease the habitat suitable for survival of tuna. Clearly, a more precautionary cut is needed to conserve the species, and in turn protect the millions of people who rely on them for food and livelihood.

A key solution to combat overfishing is to create marine reserves. They provide a refuge for stock recovery and the preservation of genetic diversity. A global network of marine reserves covering 40% of the world’s oceans is needed to preserve the integrity of our marine ecosystems.

Catching fish the way we do now — through purse seining, longlining and FADs — undermines the viability of the fish stocks, their ecosystem and the fishery itself. The Pacific Tuna Commission must cut fishing by half and set targets that secure a future for stocks, especially, as in these waters pirates take an additional 21-46% of the tuna.

Finally, the scientists presented the alarming facts on Fish Aggregation Devices (FADs), the newest and perhaps the most dangerous new threat to tuna. FADs are fast eroding overfished stocks before they even breed! Smaller yellowfin, bigeye and skipjack tuna were recorded to be caught more with FADs than regular FAD-free purse seining. Yellowfin tuna caught around FADs were, on average, less than half the size of yellowfin netted away from these devices.

It’s not science-speak, but Charles Clover — author of the book (and now movie) “The End of the Line” — summed it up perfectly:

”Killed alongside the skipjack tuna that finds itself in your tin is almost the entire cast list of Finding Nemo”.

An immediate ban on FADs is needed to protect stocks and let tuna live to grow and breed.

What is a FAD?

Blue water or oceanic species have a challenging lifestyle. Unlike most animals they have no shelter from which to hide from predators. They are vulnerable all of the time. Ocean species have many different ways to adapt to the constant threat of predation. Whales are large, jellyfish are transparent and tuna and sharks are fast.

Here’s one of the FADs we pulled out of the water. These devices attract a whole range of marine species, which are then indiscriminately netted.

Objects in the ocean present an opportunity to feed or shelter. Ocean species are biologically programmed to seek both. This is where a cruel trick is played upon the animals in our seas.

FADs can take any form. A log, a piece of net, weighted fishing gear. Any new addition to the ocean domain is attractive.

Fisheries use FADs to attract fish and then encircle them with a net called a purse seine. The net can have an area of multiple city blocks. All species that have sought the shelter of the FAD will be caught. FADs attract not just the target species like tuna but any ocean species.

FADs are often lost and abandoned and can entangle and kill animals. Ghost FADs present an ongoing threat to marine life and also a navigational hazard.

That's why Greenpeace demands a global ban on FADs: A threat to both the sustainability of fished stocks and the blue water species we love.

Hope this info helped. If you have any questions, ask away in the comments!

-Mary Ann

Mary Ann is the webbie onboard the Esperanza right now. The Espy is on a two-month tour in the Pacific to help enforce a ban on destructive fishing practices.

A black dot.

Peering through the binoculars, thats how the Taiwanese fishing vessel appeared, silhouetted against the horizon.

The past few days' activities have been like tricks from a magician’s hat – you never know what your hand will pull out. Just yesterday, we fished out a banned fish aggregating device (FAD). Yesterday, during a routine reconnaissance, we chanced upon two fishing boats transferring tuna from one to the other!

The ships, Her Hae and Jia Yu Fa (pictured above), two Taiwanese longliners, were caught RED-HANDED by the Esperanza trans-shipping in the high seas between Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM)! They were photographed transferring tuna from one to the other as well as having shark fins on-board.

However, as soon as they saw us, they both stopped operations, hurriedly disengaged from each other and the larger of the two, Her Hae, sped off.

Jia Yu Fa was left alone bobbing in its wake. The order of the day was to catch up with the ship and relay our appeal to stop trans-shipment at sea and check if they were illegal or legal. Steaming at 13.5 knots, the powerful engines of the Esperanza were making the bridge door rattle beside me at the campaign office. The whole ship was humming as we pursued the fishing boat.

We came alongside the Jia Yu Fa, delivered information about our campaign, and questioned the crew about their fishing activities. The captain said they were transferring fish to the other ship because… they had a broken freezer. They also claimed to have a permit to trans-ship at sea from the FSM authorities.


Note the sharkfins on deck, bottom left corner of the green cover.

Upon checking, we discovered that both fishing boats did indeed have licences to fish. Her Hae (the larger of the two) has a licence under the WCPFC list and Jia Yu Fa, under FSM. However, under FSM’s fishing license conditions, as we discovered, trans-shipment at sea is NOT ALLOWED. Since this was the case, their activities were deemed illegal: Jia Yu Fa for transferring fish at sea against the rules of their fishing license, and Her Hae for receiving fish from a vessel that was not allowed to do so.

Having confirmed the illegality of this monkey business at sea, the Esperanza peacefully escorted the Jia Yu Fa out of the high seas and into the waters of FSM, where they hold a license to fish and their activities can be better monitored.

Trans-shipment at sea is but one fish hook on a long line of fishing woes for Pacific islanders. Until such time as the Tuna Commission starts listening to the Pacific nations’ request to close the high seas to all forms of fishing, this dubious practice will never stop. Trans-shipment at sea is stealing a precious resource, what little is now left of the tuna stocks, from Pacific nations. Their lifeblood is sucked away with every illegal, unregulated and unreported tuna catch, not to mention the by-catch of sharks, sea turtles and other fish species that needlessly die in longline and purse seine fishing.

This was just our third day in the high seas, and we’ve already found fish aggregating devices that are supposed to be banned at this time. We’ve also witnessed one of the most elusive fishing activities, illegal trans-shipment in international waters. Imagine the other 362 days of the year that go unchecked for this type of theft and plunder? Finding these two fishing boats represents just the tip of the iceberg of pirate fishing in the Pacific.

How many Her Haes and Jia Yu Fas do we need to catch before the Tuna Commission, and the world, wakes up and acts?



When will it stop?

It’s not just a matter of strong political will on the part of the Pacific nations and the Tuna Commission to protect and replenish the tuna. This is a matter of urgency that everyone — every government, every fishing company, retailer, dealer, and last but not least, every consumer — needs to act upon now. The Pacific tuna catch must be reduced by half, the high seas must be closed to all fishing and declared marine reserves, and FADs and trans-shipment at sea must be banned.

There is no time to waste, the time to end the plunder of Pacific tuna is now.

Images © Greenpeace/Paul Hilton

Pete Willcox has been sailing on Greenpeace ships for 28 years. He's currently our skipper on the Arctic Sunrise off the coast of Greenland. This is the second in a series of Captain's Blogs that we'll be publishing throughout the three-month expedition to bear witness to the Arctic Meltdown caused by global warming.


The bow of the Arctic Sunrise, barely visible on the left of this image, works its way through the sea ice © Greenpeace/Nick Cobbing

The helicopter gets off the deck at 0800. The ship's main engine starts 20 minutes later. We are headed south at 0900, and the engine needs a while to warm up. The helicopter gets delayed, but at 0901, Eric has cast off our line, and we are underway.
 
The Arctic Ocean pack ice has invaded Nares Strait. It is old (called multi-year) sea ice, and averages six meters thick. This is way thicker than anything we can break with Arctic Sunrise. So before it can trap us in Hall Basin, we escape south. The crew all walks around telling each other that this is good, as we are all bored with Petermann.

This is, of course, a big joke. All of us feel incredibly fortunate to have spent the last two and a half weeks here. It has felt like being on a high mountaintop I imagine. You spend weeks climbing, and minutes on the top. We have been able to spend weeks here, and it's been a real treat.

The sea ice is chasing us into the bay of large icebergs. The east side of Kane Basin is the Humboldt Glacier. Being a grounded glacier, the pieces that break off are huge. As a result, Kane Basin is littered with icebergs. There are maybe 70 that we can see from here. It's a real contrast to Petermann, where the glacier is floating. From a distance the glacier ice breaking off from Petermann does not seem very different from the sea ice that forms over the winter. But these icebergs from Humboldt are ten to twenty meters high.

The helicopter gets delayed a couple times on its mission. We don't need to wait, as they are... quite a bit faster than we are. Ten times faster. When they land, Jason comes up to the bridge to show us pictures of the pod of narwhals they flew over on he way back. Narwhals are attributed to starting the unicorn legend. The males (mostly, not exclusively) have a long tusk coming out of their forehead. Nobody is sure why. Maybe it's just to look cool.

We are trying to get to the far northeast corner of Kane Basin. The further northeast we can go, the closer we will be to Petermann. Every five days or so for the next two to three weeks, we will have to service our cameras at Petermann. The closer we can get, the easier the flight.

On the way in we pass our first group of walrus. As I am looking up the ice for a lead, I notice a large brown mass. Too large and brown to be seals. When one lifts up his head, and I see to tusks sticking out the front of his face, I know it is walrus. Melanie says walrus have tusks to hold their heads off the ice so that they do not drown in their own shit, which they lay around in. I think she is being tough on walrus, but then she has seen about a thousand more than I have.

For the first time in this trip we do some real icebreaking. The ice is mostly first-year sea ice, sprinkled with pieces of glacier ice, which is much harder. It does not look very thick, and seem to be 50% melt pools, some of which go right through. At first, it is pretty easy going. With 90% power on, we are just able to break through the 50cm ice. Then we have to stop, back up one ship length, and charge at it again. And again. And again. As we cut alongside a large ‘berg, I understand Arne's explanation of ice under pressure. Here is ebb tide is pushing the floating sea ice against the grounded berg. The ice stops cracking ahead of us. We have to back up every boat length, and ram it again.

This explains Arne's first rule of icebreaking. Avoid it. Always look for a lead or a way to get around it. Icebreaking is time consuming and sucks down tons of fuel.

"Hey Arne, look out for the rock", I say. Normally this would not be necessary, and would refer to a rock on the chart below the water. In this case a pretty large boulder has rolled down the nearby cliff, and during the winter, rolled a quarter mile out onto the ice. And in this case, the warning is a joke, which we all laugh over. Our passage sends the rock down to the bottom.

After an hour we get through, and follow a lead up along the shore under the cliffs. A few minutes later we anchor in 75 meters of water. Our guys in Amsterdam added three more shots (one shot is 27.5m) to our starboard chain, giving us nine shots. Use the European formula for anchoring, the number of shots of chain needed is equal to the square root of the depth in meters, we put 8 shots on deck and call it a night.

Note to my friends from Castine. This anchoring formula is intelligent. I first learned it in Arne's (are you getting a picture yet?) bridge manual from 15 years ago on the MV Greenpeace. Notice that when you anchor in 64 meters of water, it gives you a scope of 3.4 to 1. When you anchor in 16 meters of water, it gives you 6.8 to 1. This is much smarter than just using a scope of 7 to 1 for all depths.

The other thing I did that you sailors might be interested in is use the Bowditch " Distance by Vertical Angle" tables to help figure out the height of the nearby cliff. I have very rarely used those tables, and never to determine elevation. But the surveys are so inaccurate up here that I think we got some useful data. According to Nobletec (our electronic chart), we anchored on top of the 500 metre hill top last night.

- Pete

Pete Willcox has been sailing on Greenpeace ships for 28 years. He's currently our skipper on the Arctic Sunrise off the coast of Greenland. This is the first in a series of Captain's Blogs that we'll be publishing throughout the three-month expedition to bear witness to the Arctic Meltdown caused by global warming.


Captain Pete Willcox looking at Petermann Glacier from the bridge of the Arctic Sunrise. © Greenpeace/Nick Cobbing

There is never a bad time to go out for a walk on the deck and enjoy the scenery. Because the sun is always up, there are some times that are better than others. And speaking of time, longitude up here in the Arctic, it ain't what it used to be. At the equator, where we were this winter sailing the Amazon, a degree of longitude was 60 nautical miles. Up here it is nine.

Around midnight, the sun is in line with Petermann's glacier wall, and behind us. This causes the sun to cast long shadows on the face of the canyon surrounding the glacier. The canyon walls are stratified limestone, with many colors and shades. They are connected by the undulating white glacier below them. The canyon walls are 1000 metres high, and the floor of Hall Basin (the sea bed) seems to be between 500 and 1000 meters, which means the whole canyon is... bloody big!

Looking at the glacier from our level on the bridge of the Sunrise, it does seem perfectly white. But even from the ship, when you look down at the near by melt pools, you can see black stuff on the bottom. In many places the back stuff heats up and melts further down into the glacier, sometimes in perfectly round circles. Most of the melt lakes that you see from the helicopter have black mud on a portion of them.

The black stuff is carbon from dust storms, wild fires, manmade pollution, and cosmic dust. I suspect that our scientists are having a bit of a laugh on us with the cosmic debris story, but at the moment they are sticking to it. Melanie, our fearless campaigner, went into one of the ponds the other day to collect some of the black mud. It will be sent to labs in Italy and the U.S. for analysis. I stuck my hand into one of the pools the other day. The stuff feels like sand, but is completely black.

The loss of "reflectivity" is one reason why the Arctic is changing so much faster than elsewhere. Obviously the sea ice reflects most of the warmth of the sun. The much dark ocean water does not. When the glaciers get turned to a color from cosmic dust or man made pollution, they melt much faster. Some of the black gunk is natural. Some is not. Our chemical testing of it will help us figure out how much is natural and how much is manmade.

The last week we have had a few days with temperatures up to 5C (40F). This has produced a number of waterfalls off the high cliffs along the glacier. I have been eyeing the clifftops for the last couple weeks. We have several cameras posted on them, and periodically they need servicing with the helicopter. My chance comes, and I jump at it. I like high places. Maybe it comes from working at a place – the ocean- where the biggest "mountain" is eight to ten meters. When I lived on Mallorca, one of my favorite things to do was to run up the hill behind the village. By the time I would get up to the ridgeline, I felt I was someplace special. I have the same feeling on the cliffs on the edge of the glacier, without the satisfaction of having gotten there on my own feet.

It's quiet. A gentle breeze is blowing. For the first time I realize that the part of the glacier where the ship is tied up to is sticking out much further than the parts touching the canyon walls. Jason named the open part on the southwest side Manhattan Bay. The piece we are tied to is of similar size: about the size of Manhattan. I imagine the lower tip of Manhattan with the old Twin Towers. They would stick roughly half way up the side of the canyon walls. Midtown Manhattan would stick up roughly a third. Manhattan is seven miles long. The floating part of Petermann Glacier is fifty miles long. If you laid down on the floating section of Petermann, Manhattan would represented by your head. Petermann Glacier is about to be decapitated.

Nineteen years ago I sat on the edge of the Grand Canyon, feet hanging into space, drinking a bottle of wine with some friends. The cliff was not as high as that above Petermann. Here you can look strait down 2600 feet or 760 meters. At the Grand Canyon we were looking down about a third of that. But if you fall, after the first 50 meters, what's the difference?

Here on Petermann, I do not walk up to the edge and sit down. I get on my belly and crawled until my nose was hanging in space. I grab a stone from near by and launch it. It goes down, and down, and down, and down, and down, and crashes and ricochets further. A second later I can hear the crack of the first bounce. I ease my way back from the edge, and realize I have had all the cheap thrills I will need for the rest of the week. Martin, our pilot, does not need any cheap trills of this nature, stands well back from the edge smoking his pipe and smiling away.

Being a helicopter pilot is not Martin's first career. Rumor has it on the ship that he was a welder. This sparked my interest, as I have not known many welders that went on to be helicopter pilots.

Turns out that while Martin knows how to weld, he was a tool and die maker with an invention to his credit. Calling a tool and die maker a welder is sort of like calling Formula One champion Michael Schumacher a taxi driver. Having come close to starting an apprenticeship in tool and die making, I have great respect for the trade. And it is no stretch of the imagination to imagine switching from one trade to the other.

We stop on the ice on the way back. If you are into contour lines, you could die happy here. In between the melt steams, lakes, ponds, and rivers, the glacier is constantly different. Though it looks like snow, it feels like a crust that you cannot break through. It would make a challenging golf course. Hard to hit the fairway, though.

Then I hear a noise. It's way too familiar. I look up and see the New York - Moscow express rumbling by on schedule (this is a joke, I really don't know where it going). But I am disappointed. This is the first of anybody other than my shipmates I have seen in over three weeks.

By Eric Philips, Australian polar explorer, currently acting safety guide on board the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise. This post also appeared on CNN.com.



I'm writing this blog from Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland, where a cold katabatic wind is blowing off the ice onto the deck of the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise. The ship is here on a scientific research mission and to document the effects of climate warming on the world’s largest island and second largest icecap. I’m on board as the expedition safety guide, which means making sure that everyone venturing off the ship is well-equipped and well-informed for dealing with conditions in the harsh and remote Arctic wilderness.

While it's exciting to work beside world-class scientists such as ice-sheet climatologist Jason Box, glaciologist Alun Hubbard and geophysicist Richard Bates, it's equally disheartening to be here bearing witness to the catastrophic events they record.

Each year I guide ski expeditions across the pack ice to the North Geographic Pole and each year brings new surprises - severe storms rarely seen in these parts, vast tracts of first-year ice where there should be years of accumulation, pack ice drifting faster and farther than ever before. The veneer of fractured ice over the Arctic Ocean is changing, disintegrating before my eyes. Over the last twenty years more than 5000km of ice has passed beneath my skis during numerous expeditions to both poles, as well as treks across Greenland, Spitsbergen, Iceland, Ellesmere Island and the Patagonian Icecap. Add to this multiple voyages and flights to both Antarctica and the Arctic and I have come to feel part of the polar landscape. I’ve developed somewhat of a polar sense, and I sense there is something afoot that I don't much like.



Never before has the channel between Ellesmere Island and Greenland been this ice-free in mid-summer; it’s usually blocked with ice until August. Over the past week we’ve placed GPS trackers and time-lapse cameras on and around the Petermann Glacier, in anticipation of it losing a piece of ice around 100 square km in size. Massive cracks are spearing across the ‘tongue’ of this enormous floating ice shelf (16km wide and 80km long) heralding one of the biggest glacier calvings ever recorded in the northern hemisphere. With the ice shelf no longer able to hold back the rest of glacier, that means more fresh water sliding into the ocean. Broadly speaking, the warmer the climate, the greater the melt. This phenomenon is happening not just at Petermann, but at glaciers worldwide, contributing to seal level rise.

We’ll be in Greenland for the next two months, during which time this Greenpeace-supported initiative will all but circumnavigate the island. As well as doing a lot of funky innovative science, we’ll be using the expedition to get politicians to take some responsibility for curbing emissions.

This week [ed. actually last week!], world leaders are meeting up in Italy for the G8. It’s a real — and possibly the last — opportunity for them to take a stand on climate change, in the run up to this December’s climate meeting in Copenhagen, by making cuts of 40% in Greenhouse gas emissions for developed countries.

My dual homelands are Australia and the Arctic — the latter is showing the strain of climate change more than anywhere else, but Australia is suffering too, with droughts in the south and flooding in the north. My Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, will be at the G8, as will President Obama and other heads of state. Let’s hope they don’t squander this important opportunity to make deep and lasting commitments to curbing climate change.

Photo © Greenpeace/Nick Cobbing

Published on Thursday, June 11, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

By Harvey Wasserman

As the prospective price of new reactors continues to soar, and as the first "new generation" construction projects sink in French and Finish soil, Republicans are introducing a bill to Congress demanding 100 new nuclear reactors in the US within twenty years. It explicitly welcomes "alternatives" such as oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and "clean coal." Though it endorses some renewables such as solar and wind power, it calls for no cap on carbon emissions.

According to the New York Times, this is the defining GOP alternative to a Democratic energy plan headed for a House vote later this month.

But niggling questions like who will pay for these reactors, who will insure them, where will the fuel come from, where will waste go and who will protect them from terrorists are not on the agenda. Given recent certain-to-prove-optimistic estimates of approximately $10 billion per reactor, the plan envisions a trillion-plus dollar commitment to a newly nuke-centered nation.

With this proposed legislation the GOP makes atomic energy the centerpiece of its strategy to deal with climate change.

Nuclear power requires energy-intensive activities such as uranium mining, milling, fuel enrichment, plus other carbon expenditures for plant construction, waste management and more. Reactors also convert buried uranium ore into huge quantities of heat, much of which becomes hot water and steam emitted into the environment. Reactors in France and elsewhere have been forced to shut because adjacent rivers have been taken to 90 degrees Farenheit by hot water dumped from reactor cooling systems.

None of this troubled GOP hearings this week on the future of atomic energy. There were no answers to how new reactors would be insured. Since 1957 the federal treasury has been the underwriter of last resort for potential reactor disasters. Renewed in the 2005 Bush energy plan, the commitment applies to all new reactors.

So reactors licensed to operate through 2057—as would be virtually certain under the GOP plan—would extend to a full century the atomic industry's inability to cover its own risks. Neither the Obama Administration nor the GOP has presented detailed plans for dealing with such disasters, or explained how they would be paid for.

Despite the GOP's endless focus on the terror attacks of 9/11/2001, no significant structural upgrades have been made to protect the currently licensed 104 US reactors from an air attack. The new reactors will be required to demonstrate an ability to resist a jet crash, but testing that requirement remains an open issue.

The ability to fuel this new fleet of reactors remains questionable. Reprocessing used fuel into re-usable Mixed Oxide rods has proven dirty, expensive and dangerous.

The initial experience with building new reactors runs parallel. As reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, French-financed construction projects at Flamanville, France, and at Okiluoto in Finland have soared hugely over budget and behind schedule. Much of the economically catastrophic experience endured by utilities and rate payers in building the first generation of reactors in the 1960s-1990s appears to be repeating itself with even bigger deficits. The French government's front-group Areva, which is building the new plants, has sunk into serious financial and political chaos, with potentially devastating implications for this much-touted "new generation" technology.

Recent radioactive leaks in Vermont and Illinois have underscored bitter disputes over re-licensing the 104 "first generation" US reactors. Some could now operate past the 60-year mark, even though most were originally designed to operate just 30, and all have serious issues ranging from frequent leaks to structural decay, unworkable evacuation plans and much more.

Meanwhile, with the apparent cancellation of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, the industry is no closer to dealing with its radioactive waste than it was 50 years ago.

None of which seems to daunt the industry or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has yet to turn down a proposed re-licensing. Two states—Florida and Georgia—have now passed rate hikes aimed at funding new reactor construction. And Obama's Department of Energy may soon dole out $18.5 billion in construction loan guarantees put in place by the Bush 2005 Energy Plan. The DOE has identified four prime candidates for the money.

Nonetheless, since 2007 reactor opponents have three times defeated proposals for $50 billion in loan guarantees for new reactor construction. There is no indication from Wall Street and what's left of the private banking community that without heavy government guarantees, investments in nuclear power plants are at all attractive.

But while billing itself as the party of free enterprise—especially when it comes to health care—the GOP has made itself the unabashed champion of a technology that can't raise private capital without taxpayer backing, can't get private insurance, can't manage its wastes, and shows no sign of offering a meaningful solution to the problem of carbon emissions.

What the nuclear power industry does seem to have, however, is unlimited funding to push its product in the corporate media and Congress. This latest GOP proposal for 100 new nukes may not fly in this House session.

Sadly, Democratic-sponsored legislation is not nuke-free. The situation in Congress remains fluid and unpredictable, often changing from day to day. Various aspects of bills supported by various Democrats include hidden subsidies, disguised loan guarantees, counting nuclear power as "green" in proposed renewable portfolio standards, backdoor handouts and more. Sometimes the boosts are buried in obscure corners of sub-clauses that border on the indecipherable.

But surface they do, again and again. Thus far the anti-nuclear movement has done a remarkable job of blocking the worst of them. Continuing to do that will require eternal vigilance, endless grassroots action and the steadfast belief that in the long run, our species has the will and foresight to somehow avoid radioactive self-extinction.

Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.
Greenpeace.org, Nirs.org, BeyondNuclear.org and nukefree.org are among the websites to consult for further action.