Hi!

I wanted to share some stories from our official opening of our new office in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This post is quite long but it has been the best few days and I have to share with you all.

The Arctic Sunrise appeared just before 15:30 on Saturday afternoon moving along slowly up the Congo River toward Matadi, the DRC's principal port for timber exports. The ship was quite the site to behold! As it approached, the far side of the Congo river was moving rapidly upstream, but was moving rapidly downstream here next to the port. In the middle of the two currents there was an eddy unlike anything I have ever seen.  It was an amazing site to see the pirouettes the Arctic Sunrise did as it danced in between the powerful currents.

As the ship pulled into port, 10 local drummers played traditional music and several dancers performed to celebrate its arrival. We were at the sleepy end of the port where there is normally little activity other than a few containers moving in and out, but on Saturday afternoon it came alive with port officials, the governor of the province, and many other dignitaries who had come to welcome the ship. People waited in the baking heat of the Congo sun for over two hours for the Arctic Sunrise and its crew to clear customs. And finally, with all the formalities done, the dignitaries were able to welcome the captain and the crew and tell us all how excited they were for the ship and Greenpeace to be in their town.

The rest of the team arrived on Sunday. That includes Gregoire & Jerome (GP France), An (GP Belgium), Brad, Mary, Amadou, Anne, Prudence, Danny, Raoul and Rene (GP Africa), Lalita, Dietlind, Philippe, Maarten, Chris and myself from GP International, and civil society partners from all over the country.

Throughout the day we had many people from the port and the town dropping by to say hi to the crew and take a tour of the ship. We were the big event in town and everyone wanted to join in the excitement. The sheer excitement at the arrival of the Arctic Sunrise was amazing. The ship’s crew was warm and welcoming, offering tea, coffee, and dinner to the guards, customs staff, and random visitors that popped by. Everyone seemed quite taken by the kindness and generosity we brought to town.

The day of the launch, preparations began at 8am with briefings and getting the final logistics into place. We had a beautiful event planned, and amazingly enough by 11:00am we were running ahead of schedule!!!! We had the Congolese National Environment Minister, the mayor of Matadi, the governor and his advisors, provincial ministers, parliamentarians, and others representing environment and forests at the local and national level. As the dignitaries arrived the drummers took up their beat once again, and they were joined not only by the dancers but by a police band of at least 20 people who eagerly joined in the musical celebration.

The captain welcomed the VIPs on board for a special tour of the ship. We then ushered various groups of journalists and civil society partners through tours and brought everyone into the air conditioned hold where the ceremony took place. There were over 100 guests on board and the captain and crew did a fantastic job of ensuring that all our plans went according to schedule – even better still, ahead of schedule!

We opened with a speech by the provincial governor, then Lalita and Amadou spoke, and finally the National Environment Minister addressed us and welcomed Greenpeace but also challenged us to be real partners and turn our words into actions. He acknowledged that the road ahead may not be easy but he welcomed us warmly and officially declared the office open in Kinshasa (DRC's capital city and the location of our new office). Afterward we whisked our guests off to a hotel where everyone enjoyed a beautiful luncheon and we managed to have a good discussion with the high-level officials about Forests for Climate and what the climate talks in Poznan, Poland, which are happening this December, mean to the Congo Basin.

This day was truly an amazing day. As I sit here and type, it is so hard to find the words to fully explain what the atmosphere was like. The DRC is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis, and has been ravaged by years of conflict, part of which is driven by its natural resource wealth. This day we signaled our commitment to work here and address the environmental and social issues facing the 40 million people whose very lives are dependent on the forests and their amazing biodiversity. We saw hope and excitement that an organization with Greenpeace’s global reach and tools like the Arctic Sunrise was making such a strong commitment to work in partnership with these people who have suffered so much.

Opening an office in the Congo has been a long time in the making. We managed to do it in style. As the captain said, if we can run an event like this in the Congo, and ahead of schedule no less, we can do anything!

But now the hard work begins. This office needs all of our support and commitment as they are about to embark on the challenge of finding their way into the Greenpeace world, hurdling the planning meetings, learning how to leverage the national and international aspect of our campaign strategy, and finding the vision for the Congo that comes from the people of the Congo with the complete support of this organization.

Some of us returned to Kinshasa to ready ourselves for the trip to Poznan, where we will carry these stories forward in our fight to save the forests for the climate. Some of the team set sail today down the Congo River at 18 knots, and are now beginning preparations to do a solar generation workshop, led by Christian of GP China and the Kids for Forests team from Cameroun and Kinshasa. After the workshops they will do a solar installation and show movies on the solar cinema. We are not only showing our work defending forests and the people and ecosystems that depend on them, but also bringing in real solutions to the many needs and challenges of the Congo.

I want to say a final thanks to all of those that were there, the ship and its fantastic crew, the GP Africa staff and all the NROs and our civil society partners. It is most definitely a day I will not ever forget. Viva la Afrique!

Lots of love and warmth from our newest office in Africa!

Michelle Medeiros
Africa Campaign Coordinator
Greenpeace International

Within hours of President-elect Obama's victory, the nuclear industry was at it again: spinning nuclear power and attempting to put the best light on the industry's prospects after the loss of their favorite candidate, Sen. John McCain. The President of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), Skip Bowman, congratulated President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden on their victory and then he proceeded to mischaracterize their position on nuclear power.

I wrote all about it over on Huffington Post -- check it out!

Lots of good news for the climate this week, from Obama renewing his commitment to send a representative to the climate talks in Poland to Alaska Senator, convicted felon, and generally regressive policy booster Ted Stevens losing his bid for reelection. But perhaps the best news we heard was that Rep. Henry Waxman (D–CA) had successfully challenged Rep. John Dingell (D–MI) for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. This is a game-changer.

Obama may have signaled his clear intent to join with the rest of the world in implementing the most effective policies for tackling global warming, but he will need an equally committed Congress to help craft all the policy that will be necessary. And the House Energy and Commerce Committee will be key to getting that done. There are two reasons why Waxman ousting Dingell is most welcome news.

For one thing, Dingell has acted as little more than a lobbyist for the auto industry even while he was in a powerful position from which he could have affected real change. Says the New York Times: “Mr. Dingell, who represents a suburban Detroit district, has been the industry’s most stalwart defender in Congress, having slowed or blocked many safety and environmental standards that the auto companies argued they could not meet.” Those environmental standards, by the way, might have been tough to implement, but in the long run they would have kept the automakers solvent in today’s energy-conscious marketplace while also helping lower emissions from vehicles and therefore our national carbon footprint. It’s a textbook example of failed leadership.

And for another thing, Waxman is one of, if not the, biggest champions of global warming legislation in Congress. He wrote the Safe Climate Act, the best global warming bill to come out of either house of the 110th Congress, and he got 152 of his fellow House Representatives to sign onto his open-letter Global Warming Statement of Principles. Greenpeace USA’s deputy director of campaigns, Carroll Muffett, puts it well in this press release:

Rep. Waxman was a key figure in passing some of the country’s most important environmental and public health legislation. We applaud his appointment as Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. From the Community Right to Know Act to the Clean Air Act to the Safe Drinking Water Act, he has been a leading voice for the public interest and one of the country’s most effective legislators.

Rep. Waxman has shown the same dedication to solving global warming, the biggest environmental and public health crisis of our time, by demanding strong, science-based solutions and building support for action in Congress.

Tackling the global warming crisis demands the full commitment of our government, and with Rep. Waxman’s leadership 152 members of Congress have already taken an important step by outlining a blueprint for success. Now we need Congress and the new presidential administration to come together and turn these ideas into action by passing comprehensive, science-based legislation as soon as possible.

Under his leadership, we are confident the Energy and Commerce Committee can move quickly to turn that blueprint into a workable, effective bill to solve the climate crisis. We urge Congressional leaders and our new president to work with Chairman Waxman to turn that bill into law in 2009.

Finally, leadership we can believe in.

Ashley Perry is a 12-year-old at Friedman Middle School in Taunton, Massachusetts, who has taken to activism and campaigning at an early age. 

As we all know, Kimberly-Clark destroys ancient forests to make tissue-products like Kleenex and Scott tissues.  Ashley is running her own Kleercut campaign!

First, she implemented a Perry-family boycott of Kimberly-Clark products.  Ashley had read about Greenpeace’s Kleercut campaign on our website, took action, and she was able to persuade her family to follow her lead.  

Ashley has taken her campaign on the road as well; she refuses to use Kleenex at her friends’ houses!  She has distributed fliers that talk about switching to a more environmentally friendly tissue brand in her neighbors’ mailboxes and handed them out to spectators at the local baseball field about.

At her school, Ashley is a member of the Blue Crew, a group of students who go around twice a week to the classrooms to pick up paper for recycling.  In addition to her Kleenex-boycott work, Ashley has, along with her mom’s help, started a recycling program—the Ashley Perry Project—at the local baseball field.  Every week Ashley and her mom go retrieve the recyclables and bring them home to put in their own bins.  Recently Ashley wrote a letter to her school asking them to place recycling bins in the cafeteria for paper and plastic products.  Ashley says the response from her classmates and community members has been positive.  “They have been pretty good about recycling and putting it in the right bins,” she says.

Thanks to Ashley for taking the initiative, doing the research and making positive change!  It will take all of us to protect the ancient forests!

Keep up the great work, Ashley!

Andrea

In today's Guardian, Fred Pearce calls out BP's "Beyond Petroleum" greenwash.  

He states:

"BP likes to say that it is investing $1.5bn (£980,000) a year in 'alternative energy'. True, I am sure. But that word 'alternative' is clever. Delve a little further and it turns out that BP's alternative energy division includes not just wind and solar and biofuels but also natural gas-fired power stations. Natural gas may be less polluting than coal and oil, but at the end of the day it's a fossil fuel filling the atmosphere with CO2. Alternative? Not by my definition."

He goes on:

"Also sheltering in the alternative energy division is BP's 'emissions assets business', which makes money out of carbon trading, and a venture capital unit. But even if we lump all this 'alternative' activity together, it still only makes up 7% of the company's planned $21bn (£13.85bn) investment this year. The remaining 93% is oil, spiced up with some coal."

 Read the full article - Greenwash: BP and the myth of a world 'Beyond Petroleum'

 

Not even two weeks have gone by since the presidential election in which Americans voted decisively for change. Incredibly, despite a national mood rife with hope and optimism, our "leaders" are already lowering expectations on what we can accomplish:

WASHINGTON: Congress will not act until 2010 on a bill to limit the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming despite President-elect Obama's declaration that he will move quickly to address climate change, the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee predicted Wednesday.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said that while every effort should be made to cap greenhouse gases, the economic crisis, the transition to a new administration and the complexity of setting up a nationwide market for carbon pollution permits preclude acting in 2009.

We've said it several times over the past couple weeks: The election results may bode well for our cause, but the real work has only just begun. We're gonna have to stay on top of these people in a big way if we want to really tackle global warming before it's too late.

Many, many disastrous policies were put in place by the Bush administration. But none will have more far-reaching an impact than those policies that were adopted as a means of delaying serious action on global warming.

Choosing how to go about rolling back all of Bush’s harmful policies is a monumental task, to be sure. Luckily, according to the Washington Post, Obama already has a team working on it:

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

Obama has signaled his desire to undo one of the least rational of Bush’s policies:

The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration's decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. "Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer," Obama said in January.

California had sought permission from the Environmental Protection Agency to require that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles be cut by 30 percent between 2009 and 2016, effectively mandating that cars achieve a fuel economy standard of at least 36 miles per gallon within eight years.

California arrived at these regulations in a very bipartisan way. Such prominent Republicans as Arnold Schwarzenegger were the most vocal supporters of California’s auto emissions standards. Bush's opposition is an example of his extreme anti-environmentalism even in the face of overwhelming evidence that we must impose just such regulations on emissions in order to effectively combat global warming.

If Obama does in fact reverse this decision it will be a welcome change. And it will make a real difference: 17 other states had committed to following California’s lead on auto emissions, for instance. All told, these 18 states represent nearly half of the U.S. automobile market. Aside from their obvious impact on our total greenhouse gas emissions, bold, proggressive standards like California’s will help spur innovation that could reshape the entire auto industry in America.

The WaPo article also notes that Obama has said he “favors declaring that carbon dioxide emissions are endangering human welfare, following an EPA task force recommendation last December that Bush and his aides shunned in order to protect the utility and auto industries.” Take a look at sales by foreign companies like Toyota and Honda, who offer a variety of hybrid and other fuel-efficient models, versus the Big 3 American auto manufacturers, who proudly brought us the Hummer, and you will realize Bush in fact was not doing them any favors.

We cannot adequately address global warming by trying to pretend the problem doesn’t exist. We need fresh ideas and a new era of innovation to combat the enormity of the problem, and for that we need real leadership. Judging from early reports like this WaPo piece, the Obama administration appears poised to provide that leadership. It comes none too soon: we wasted the last eight years, and time is running out.

Tissue giant (and forest destroyer) Kimberly-Clark is trying to convince Spanish speakers in the US to buy its products – Huggies and Pull-ups in particular.  To do so, they’re touring southern California, handing out sample diapers.  If you’re a regular Treehugger blog reader, you know that they’ve had some weird marketing tours in the last year, including an ugly dog-bus and a fake café.  This time, it is a diaper-train tent.  I’m serious.

On Saturday, Kimberly-Clark advertisers set up in shopping center parking lots in the San Diego area.  Everything was going according to plan…until Greenpeace activists showed up again.

The diaper-dealers didn’t realize that Saturday was the start of the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), a holiday of Mexican heritage that celebrates those who have passed with a variety of activities – including the building of commemorative altars.

Our team sprang into action, setting up a Day of the Dead altar to honor the animals and ancient forests that have been destroyed for Kimberly-Clark’s throw-away products.  The display was complete with Boreal animals, posters of clearcut ancient forests, and placards that explained in Spanish and English: Dedicado a la memoria de los bosques eliminados por KC (In Memory of Forests Destroyed by Kimberly-Clark).

The team also passed out bilingual fliers to hundreds of shoppers, educating them about Kimberly-Clark’s role in ancient forest destruction.  The response was enthusiastic.  It seems ancient forest destruction stinks no matter how you say it.

The diaper-dealers tried to scare away our activists by threatening to “call Kimberly-Clark” and “take pictures” of them.  The activists were delighted by this news, since they’d been working hard to get people to call Kimberly-Clark and had been taking pictures of themselves all afternoon!

Stay tuned as our creative activists turn up the heat on K-C.  In the meantime, visit our take action center to use your own creativity to make a statement for ancient forests.

-Rolf

We recently put out a new edition of our Energy [R]evolution plan (here's the full report, and here's the executive summary) and the timing could not have been better. We are faced with two major crises right now: global warming and the economic meltdown. Investing in renewable energy can solve both of these crises, and the Energy [R]evolution shows how.

The report provides a practical blueprint for rapidly cutting energy-related CO2 emissions in order to help ensure that greenhouse gas emissions peak and then fall by 2015. A major means of reaching this goal would be to aggressively invest in renewable energy. According to the report, renewable energy could more than double its share of the world’s energy supply – reaching up to 30% by 2030 – given the proper leadership to promote the large-scale deployment of existing technologies. Meanwhile, the total fuel cost savings for the global energy industry would reach $18.7 trillion by 2030, or $750 billion of annual savings that could be passed on to consumers.

The technologies exist to make an energy revolution a reality. What we’re lacking is the political will to get it done. Thankfully, there is a growing body of evidence that supports the basic assertion of the Energy [R]evolution that we can solve both the climate crisis and the economic crisis at the same time.

I wrote a post a couple weeks back about a UC-Berkeley report that found that California’s green policies have created 1.5 million jobs over the past three decades, and now there is even more evidence that solving global warming by investing in the clean energy sources of the future will create jobs and revitalize our ailing economy. This time the evidence is more anecdotal than scientific or data-driven, but it is nonetheless convincing. On Nov. 1 the New York Times published a lengthy piece entitled “A Splash of Green for the Rust Belt” that examined the phenomenon of the renewable energy industry breathing new life into factory towns that had been left for dead when manufacturers closed down their operations and moved out of town:

From the faded steel enclaves of Pennsylvania to the reeling auto towns of Michigan and Ohio, state and local governments are aggressively courting manufacturing companies that supply wind energy farms, solar electricity plants and factories that turn crops into diesel fuel.

This courtship has less to do with the loftiest aims of renewable energy proponents — curbing greenhouse gas emissions and lessening American dependence on foreign oil — and more to do with paychecks. In the face of rising unemployment, renewable energy has become a crucial source of good jobs, particularly for laid-off Rust Belt workers.

Investing in renewable energy can revitalize a stagnant economy! And also, it's pretty inspiring to read about the sense of patriotism and purpose that comes from working in renewables; one guy quoted in the NYT article said, "For 35 years, I pounded my body to the ground. Now, I feel like I’m doing something beneficial for mankind and the United States," while another said, "I feel I’m doing something to improve our country, rather than just building a washing machine." But it’s one thing for small municipalities to recognize how good renewables are for our country and our planet, and a whole other thing for us to realize this on a national scale. We need leadership on this issue. Here’s hoping that whatever the results, tomorrow’s elections will, at last, provide America with that leadership…