It’s not every day that the US Chamber of Commerce shows up on my doorstep here in the city by the Bay. Since the Chamber is the multi-million dollar lobbyist muscle for some of the biggest climate criminal corporations in the world, I decided to rearrange my morning to pay them a visit. Let’s see, to do list for Thursday:

8:00 am Punk Chamber with balloon banner in lobby of their conference. Check.


8:30 Meet up for coffee, tell stories, high five! Check.
8:35 Back to the office to take on more corporate polluters. Check. I love my life.

Here's a little backstory and an idea for what you can do:

We’ve seen some high profile businesses leave the Chamber recently because their extreme position on climate change has put it out of step with the growing number of US businesses that support the clean energy and climate legislation that would strengthen our economy and protect our planet. With President Tom Donohue at the helm of the Chamber, the climate lies and deception have been free-flowing. Hence, our banner reads: “ Donohue’s Climate Lies: Bad for Business, Bad for America.”

My personal message to Donohue: if you’re going to parade around in San Francisco with your sassy double talk on the climate, you’d better believe we’ll be there to speak truth directly to your power, even if it’s over your morning breakfast pastry at a swanky hotel.

The important take home here is that this isn’t about Tom Donohue or banners — it’s about saving the climate, and the millions of people and countless species that will be effected if we don’t. The American business community and the planet will continue to be harmed as long as Don0hue’s Chamber stands in the way of meaningful climate action.

What’s next for Tom Donohue? Well, that’s up to you. People like him could be leading the world toward climate solutions. He should be held accountable for doing the opposite. So call for Donohue to get fired. You can start on the Chamber facebook fan page here (a good read for some zany propaganda). Don't be shy about fanning the page, leaving a comment about what you think of Donohue and the Chamber's anti-climate propaganda, and then un-fanning the page.

Have fun and thanks for raising your voice to save the climate!

Through my few years of experience with organizing, I’ve never had the pleasure to join with such a diverse coalition of organizations as I did yesterday when the US Chamber of Commerce came to town. With a crowd of over 100 strong, Greenpeace joined with local labor unions, a national worker’s rights group, Change To Win, as well as Sierra Club, MoveOn and many more to call out Tom Donohue, the president of the US Chamber of Commerce.



Our event kicked off with a press conference that included high-energy speeches from local business owners, local labor union members, and representative from the Sierra Club and yours truly. After a collective call for the US Chamber of Commerce to represent the small businesses and not a handful of CEOs, we all marched over to the Fairmont Hotel where the conference was being held. There we were joined by local San Francisco City Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who jumped on the bull horn and called for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce to continue distancing itself from Tom Donohue’s US Chamber because of their polices on climate, health care, and workers' rights.



Why so much attention on one guy? Well, because under Tom Donohue’s leadership, the US Chamber of Commerce has been pushing an agenda that favors corporate CEO profits at the expense of people and the planet. They have spent millions lobbying against important legislation, from climate to health care.

Due to previous protests in Chicago and Philadelphia at their conferences, registration for attendees was closed early and nearly half of the room was filled. I assume they suspected that San Francisco, and its business owners, would not be as welcoming to a climate denier and progress inhibitor like Tom Donohue. Well, I guess they were right about one thing.

I think the administration may be winning, based on some press lately, with their goal to: lower popular expectations significantly and make Copenhagen appear a success even if it violates what the international community agreed to accomplish by Copenhagen.

Recently, President Obama and President Hu of China jointly declared that they "agree on the importance" of carrying through on the Bali Action Plan (BAP). The BAP set all parties on 2-year path to a real agreement with real numbers. Those two years are up in Copenhagen. However, Obama has recently stated his support for delaying an agreement in Copenhagen.

Now we hear from Capitol Hill not just that ‘US Congress may not finish by Copenhagen,’ but that the 'Senate will punt until the Spring' and 'Kerry says climate comes after [not just] health care, [but now] financial reform.' For many reasons, such as that 2010 is going to be a tough election year, this translates to... the US Congress very likely will not pass a climate bill before 2011, by the next scheduled climate meeting in Mexico.

If Obama is waiting for Congress, will his international climate strategy be the same next year? Will he try to lower expectations for Mexico, so it doesn't seem like the US contributed to its failure? Answers to these questions, of course, rely on the president's willingness to invest his time and energy in achieving effective climate policy. But not knowing if that will happen, the question for Copenhagen is how to get a result that prevents a repeat of this US procrastination strategy.

I am starting to wonder if Obama will engage in a serious public campaign on climate before 2011, if even then. We should have seen some hint of this by now. His stated goal for US emissions reductions was actually worse than what the Congress is considering. He has supported a 2020 deadline of getting the US back to 1990 levels of emissions, when the world started to seriously discuss climate change. From the perspective of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this goal by Obama is to do nothing. We should be reducing about 40% from 1990, not 0%.

In the joint declaration by Obama and Hu, it was sadly apparent which delegation drafted which sentences on carbon sequestration and on nuclear energy. The few public comments from Obama have included endorsement of both of these non-solutions.  We hope President Obama will listen to President Hu and abandon efforts that benefit industry instead of renewable energy solutions that harmonize with goals for a healthy economy and environment.

If we cannot get the BAP fulfilled with any poignance, maybe we can get a pre-launch type of agreement that counts down to a lift-off no later than Mexico. And somehow the US should be given a spanking for not doing its chores (corporal punishment is still normal in many parts of the US). Perhaps that involves a second commitment period for Kyoto, in other words the rest of the world moves forward while the US is an outsider. But the spanking must include thwarting any notion that the US has been a wise and moral leader on climate policy.

Click on some relevant articles below from the last week:

Obama calls for climate pact with 'immediate' effect

Obama must be more engaged on climate change: Greenpeace

U.S. weighs backing interim international climate agreement

 

ICCAT has gone too far.  The greed and corruption running this Commission are now about as well camouflaged as a stegosaurus trying to hide behind a postage stamp.  Forgive the hackneyed humor, but there is no longer any doubt whatsoever that ICCAT does in fact stand for “The International Conspiracy to Catch All the Tuna.”

Last week, at a meeting in Recife, Brazil, the scientific advisers to the Commission proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Northern bluefin tuna is in a critical situation.  Not a single delegate dared voice an objection to the fact that the animal’s perilous status qualified it for protection under CITES.

Numerous scientists from a multitude of different countries and environmental organizations submitted proposals stating unequivocally that the quota must be dropped from the current 19,500 metric tons to no more than 8,000 metric tons, if we hope to give the population even a 50% chance of recovery.

The science was bulletproof.  There was not a single shred of evidence that could countervail this assertion.  Greenpeace, WWF, and other environmental groups belabored the point until they were hoarse. Charles Clover, author of The End of the Line and prominent champion of the bluefin, made the trek to Recife to plead the poor fish’s case – he even managed to arrange a screening of the film for the ICCAT delegates.

So, when all was said and done, what was the final decision of the Commission?

In its infinite wisdom, the august body that is ICCAT voted to set the upcoming season’s bluefin quota at 13,500 metric tons.

This number far exceeds any remotely defensible figure.  It’s a quota with zero scientific basis that flies in the face of conventional wisdom and virtually ensures the commercial extinction of this animal.  Such a calculus is justifiable only to the members of what is clearly no more than a political cult idolizing greed, corruption, and piracy.

I need to take a few seconds and collect myself before continuing, lest this post degenerate into rabid polemics and I end up with spittle all over my computer screen.  I am so angry right now that it is difficult for me to express myself in a manner that doesn’t involve the wanton destruction of some nearby appliance.

ICCAT has failed.  It has failed us, and it has failed the bluefin.  It has failed the oceans, it has failed the planet, and it has failed our children.

In fact, ICCAT has even managed to fail the myopic fishing interests that control it.  Any corruption-riddled junta worth its salt should at least be able to satisfy its puppeteers to the degree that it provide them with their illicit plunder for more than just a couple of years.  This quota will not only ensure the destruction of the bluefin, but it will result in the controlling parties not even having a resource to exploit come the end of the Mayan calendar.

Immediately folloing the closing session of the Recife meeting, Charles Clover wrote a scathing and comprehensive letter in response to this kangaroo court escapade, noting that not only was the Commission unable to adopt sensible protections for several shark species, ICCAT actually voted to allow three member nations to continue to use drift nets — one of the most indiscriminate and destructive fishing methods on the face of the planet.  And thus do we all sally forth together into this bright new tuna-free world.

So where’s the silver lining here?  Believe it or not, it rests with the US government.

Nearly a month ago, I wrote a short post about how Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), had passed on Monaco’s proposal and threw her support behind ICCAT with the proviso that ICCAT set “responsible science-based quotas,” among other instructions.  Clearly, the Commission did not adhere to this directive.  As such, it is now Dr. Lubchenco’s responsibility to live up to her promise and champion Monaco’s proposal to grant the Northern bluefin tuna protection under CITES Appendix 1.  And it is our responsibility, as stewards and citizens of this planet, to show her our support.

I urge all who read this to send an email to Dr. Jane Lubchenco at Jane.Lubchenco@noaa.gov reminding her to rise to the occasion and stand up for the bluefin tuna.  ICCAT clearly cannot do so, regardless of the clarity and quantity of science that would justify such action.  It is time to cast off the trappings of this useless, obsolete Commission and to try something that will actually work.

Additional background on this issue can be found in Ashley Mirabile's excellent and comprhensive post on the plight of the bluefin.

On November 16th, two Greenpeace activists from Germany and Italy and two members of the press from India and Italy, all of whom were traveling on valid business and journalist visas, were picked up and detained by Indonesian police. They were on their way to meet the villagers of Teluk Meranti, who have been supporting Greenpeace in its efforts to highlight rainforest and peatland destruction in the Kampar Peninsula--ground zero for climate change. The police also took into custody an activist from Belgium who had been working at our Climate Defenders Camp there.

Despite the validity of their travel documents and the absence of any wrongdoing, two of the activists and both journalists are now being deported by immigration authorities on questionable and seemingly contrived grounds, even though no formal deportation permits have been issued. Just a few days before, immigration authorities deported eleven other international Greenpeace activists who participated in a non-violent direct action on November 12th, in a concession where APRIL, one of Indonesia's largest pulp and paper companies, is clearing rainforest and draining peatland on the Peninsula.

We set up the Climate Defenders Camp to bring attention to role of deforestation as a major driver of greenhouse gas emissions in advance of December's Copenhagen climate negotiations. If we are stop climate change, we must end global deforestation by 2020 and bring it to zero in priority areas like Indonesia by 2015. A drive through the Kampar Peninsula reveals acre after acre of forest conversion from healthy rainforest to palm oil plantations. There is no sign of animal life or biodiversity -- just row after row of palm. The destruction of the peatlands helps to make Indonesia the world's 3rd largest emitter go greenhouse gases, just after the US and China.

In the interest of the environment and human rights, Greenpeace is calling upon world leaders and concerned citizens to contact Indonesia's President Yudhoyono to ask him to stop these repressive actions by the Indonesian Police and Immigration authorities. The tactics currently being used by the authorities are likely to adversely impact upon the Indonesian government's international reputation as well as the country's reputation as a vibrant democracy.

It is not Greenpeace activists or journalists who should be the focus of the authorities, but the companies who are responsible for this forest destruction. We are working to make President Yudhoyono's recent commitment to reduce Indonesia's greenhouse gas emissions a reality and the journalists are telling that story.

You can take action at www.greenpeace.org.

The new "deal" to delay signing a climate agreeement until next year, which was announced at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting this past weekend, is nothing more than an attempt to lower expectations for the climate talks taking place in Copenhagen this December. It’s especially disappointing given President Obama’s key role in the announcement. What we really need is for Obama to step up and lead the world as a bold advocate of an ambitious and binding treaty.

What’s even more disturbing is that this is part of a larger trend in Obama’s handling of the climate crisis since taking office. In his inaugural address he promised to “restore science to its rightful place,” yet he has not followed through on that promise. Instead, he sat back and watched as the coal industry essentially rewrote climate legislation as it moved through the House. And now that the Senate is in no rush to pass a similar bill, Obama is letting that dictate his foreign policy and stalling an international climate agreement.

Fed up with the stalling and lowering of expectations? I know I am. Tell Obama that December is the time to sign an ambitious climate treaty, not some unspecified future date.

This brazen stall tactic is all the more unconscionable when you consider the fact that it ignores the plight of the developing world, which will be hit hardest by global warming even though they did not have nearly as large a hand in creating the problem as developed countries like the US had. There’s more on this topic and the “deal” to not make a deal in Copenhagen in this statement from Greenpeace International:

“ Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen has become complicit in a so-called ‘deal’ which would put Obama’s political difficulties ahead of the survival of the world’s most vulnerable countries,” said Kaisa Kosonen, Climate Policy Advisor for Greenpeace International, in Copenhagen ahead of tomorrow’s “Pre-COP” gathering of key environment ministers in preparation for December’s climate summit.

“I don’t think a majority of countries will buy this face-saving plan. When Obama started downplaying the Copenhagen outcomes, did he check with the world’s most vulnerable countries as to whether their survival was now negotiable? That’s certainly not the message we have heard – climate change impacts are already affecting millions across the developing world and they need action now. There is no real excuse to postpone decisions on legally binding, ambitious action,” said Kosonen.

She questioned whether any EU leaders knew about Rasmussen’s cop-out deal. They were not at APEC, which only includes some of the world’s industrialized countries – the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Japan.

“ EU leaders, including Merkel, Sarkozy and Brown, must immediately step in and publicly oppose this back down from a legally binding climate agreement in Copenhagen,” she said.

Just two weeks ago in Barcelona the 43-member Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) expressed outrage at attempts to steamroll the world’s most vulnerable countries into accepting a watered down political agreement at the Copenhagen Climate Summit. Their calls are supported by the African Group, which said it would accept only legally binding commitments on deep emission cuts and adequate funding from the industrialized world for climate adaptation and mitigation, including tackling deforestation.

“This is not about time but rather the absence of political will from industrialized countries, which are refusing to take their fair share of the global efforts and instead continue to postpone important decisions into eternity. Denmark should be ashamed of itself for caving in to Obama in this so-called deal,” said Kosonen.

Industrialized countries recognized two years ago that they would need to cut their emissions in the range of at least 25-40%. But right now their aggregate emissions stand at a mere 10-17%, not enough to stop climate change. The industrialized countries at the APEC meeting are largely those at the lower end of this range.

The bill passed by the House is certainly at the lower end of emissions reductions targets, aiming for a mere 4% reduction relative to 1990 levels by 2020. Half-measures like this will doom us all to runaway climate change we can believe in – because we’ll be increasingly witnessing its effects with our own eyes.

There was enough bad news last week to make me want to crawl under my desk and never come back out. But as the saying goes, sometimes the darkest hour is just before the dawn. First came news that President Obama, along with other leaders of Asian Pacific countries, would announce that they will not pursue a binding treaty in Copenhagen next month. Millions of climate activists have been working for years to make the Copenhagen negotiations the time when the world would come together to make the necessary agreements that will halt catastrophic climate change. Now that chance is in serious danger of being lost.  

 

 

 

On the heels of this dereliction came word that police were descending on Greenpeace’s Climate Defenders Camp, our outpost in the threatened Kampar Peninsula in Indonesia, designed to show Obama and other leaders the face of deforestation, a primary driver of climate change.

 

But in an amazing turn of events, the chief of police of the Pelalawan district revoked an earlier order of the Governor of Riau to evict Greenpeace activists and permitted them to stay following massive support from local communities. Over 300 community members of Teluk Meranti village, across the river from the camp, came in the morning to prevent Greenpeace activists from leaving the camp under police escort as per the orders of Riau police.

 

The activists in the camp were overwhelmed and humbled by this extraordinary support from the people of Riau, and it confirms our belief that the people of Indonesia wish their forests to be protected. The community support should be a signal to President Yudhoyono that his people are willing to help him honor his ambition to reduce emissions from deforestation.

 

Greenpeace opened the camp three weeks ago to bring urgent attention to the role that rainforest and peatland destruction play in driving dangerous climate change. Almost a fifth of global warming causing emissions come from deforestation, making Riau ground zero for climate change.

 

The camp will continue to serve as a beacon of hope for all of us waiting until our leaders wake up to reality. These leaders will not act until massive public outrage forces them to.The time for action is now, not next year or the year after. We can't kick this can down the road for the next generation to deal with. President Obama, show leadership and galvanize support for a binding treaty now.

Our Land and our Waters: Our Future


As Unangan (Aleut) people who have lived and survived on the Islands of the Aleutian Chain for almost 10,000 years, our survival and our foods have always come from the waters surrounding our Island villages.

The Pribilof Islands were discovered in 1786 by Russian navigator Gavriil Pribilof, ending a three-year search by Siberian merchants for the breeding site of the valuable fur seals. The roaring of seals drew Pribilof's boat through the summer fog to St. George Island. Thus the Pribilof Islands. These islands were not inhabited when discovered. Following this discovery, small bands of Unangan were enslaved to these islands from the Aleutian Chain to protect and harvest the millions of fur seals found there. Thus began a 200 year history of a people misplaced by governments eager to make money off of the vast resources found then and now in the form of fish and crab. The legacy of slavery seems to continue into twenty-first century America.

Today the descendents of the enslaved Unangan, done first by Russia and later by America, are struggling to survive on the islands in which our ancestors made a living and in which many are buried.  The once abundant northern fur seal populations, once ranging in number into the millions, are now numbered around 550,000 and steadily declining. The millions of pounds of king and tanner crab fishery are either a fraction of what they once were or are now closed due to overfishing. Today only a small percentage of fish once so abundant are now being taken by a hand full of large industrialized factory trawlers, long liners and crabbers, many coming to the Bering Sea from far away ports in the lower 48 states.

Traditional foods are moving away, or in many cases becoming so stressed due to the lack of their own foods, that the Unangan are finding it very difficult to fill their needs. With “store bought” foods so expensive and non-nutritious, the Unangan are once again facing an uncertain future. Again a group of people taken from their homes to protect and harvest fur seal may be forced to move from their homes because of poorly managed fisheries by the United States of America.  

These distressing activities are not only happening to the Unangan of the Bering Sea, but to all coastal tribal communities who depend upon the waters for survival.  For every village, it’s the water that provides and not the land.

As a result, the Alaska Federation of Natives recently passed a resolution at their 2009 convention in Anchorage to establish cultural heritage zones to help protect our foods and the habitat they depend upon in our waters. This is a major first step. Now our tribal governments must take the lead and begin to identify and designate these sites.

One such community is the Pribilof Island village of St. George. Their tribal leaders have been in discussions, workshops and research to find a solution to how the bottom trawlers can be stopped before critical benthic habitat is destroyed!

Recently both the Village Corporation and the tribal government of St. George have joined forces to seek cultural heritage zone protections for the waters immediately around their island as well as within the critical habitats of both the Pribilof and Zhemchug Canyons. What they are demanding our governments do is establish no trawl zones within twenty miles around St. George Island and no trawls deeper than 100 fathoms in both Canyons.

The leadership of our Tribes are also requesting that the State and Federal Governments responsible for the management of these resources formulate co- management agreements to ensure local input in any future decisions regarding the use of these fishery resources. This is about the survival of a people. This is about food security. This is about finally recognizing local tribal communities as valuable partners in the understanding of our nation’s ocean resources and seeking their valuable input in its management.

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.

 

Greenpeace activists delivered over 7,000 "Stop Whaling" petitions to the Japanese Embassy in Washington, D.C today, just hours before President Obama was scheduled to travel to Japan. As Michelle wrote yesterday, there is a very real possibility that Japan's whaling program could be ended soon. That's why we took the opportunity to send the message to Japan that they should stop whaling in the Southern Ocean international whale sanctuary, and use Obama's visit as a chance to make that announcement to the world.

Check out these pics from the delivery event today:



If you want to lend your voice to the call for Japan to stop slaughtering whales, sign our petition urging President Obama to to talk about whale conservation with the new Japanese Prime Minister.

Serious climate issues are often shrouded in complicated and arcane scientific and political language.  This makes it easy for corporate polluters to disguise their agenda and intentions when talking about climate and energy policy.  Below is a letter polluters sent to decision-makers this week urging them to increase the number of international offsets in climate legislation.  I’ve taken the liberty of translating it for you.  Read on to see what they’re really saying.

Also note the list of companies signing the letter.  Among them are many huge polluters such as Duke Energy, Dominion, Exelon and American Electric Power – the company that was a focus in the recent Greenpeace Carbon Scam report.

But also on the list is Intel, a company that strives to associate its brand with innovation and the future.  Why are they associating themselves with some of the biggest, most backwards polluters in the country?  Good question.  You can read more about how Intel stacks up against other tech companies on our Cool IT Challenge campaign site.

Anyway, read on…

=============

Re: The Importance of International Offsets for U.S. Climate Change Mitigation Efforts

Dear Senator Kerry, Senator Graham, and Senator Lieberman:

We, the undersigned, are companies that employ hundreds of thousands of American workers, and serve hundreds of millions of American consumers. We expect that our companies would be affected significantly by any greenhouse gas regulatory program. We write today to communicate our firm belief that in order for any such program to be both environmentally effective and economically sound it should be market-based and incorporate both domestic and international offsets. To this end, we are concerned about the further restrictions on use of international offset credits in S. 1733, reported last week by the Environment and Public Works Committee.

TRANSLATION: We are some of the biggest, richest polluters in the world and we have a lot invested in dirty business.  If you pass climate legislation without huge loopholes for us, we’re going to be very upset.  One of the most important loopholes we want are carbon offsets – cheap vouchers that allow us to side-step cutting our pollution with the rationale that someone else, somewhere else, will cut pollution instead.  Sure, the legislation in Congress already has massive subsidies for us and billions of tons of offsets in it, but we are still not happy.  We always want more.

The cost containment provided by international offsets is dramatic and critical. Every major study of greenhouse gas regulation has reached this conclusion. The Environmental Protection Agency’s analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill found that the costs of the cap-and-trade program would increase by 89% without international offsets. By cutting the costs of a cap-and-trade program almost in half, international offsets preserve U.S. jobs and U.S. competitiveness.

TRANSLATION: Outsourcing jobs saves us a lot of money.  Likewise, we want to outsource investments in green jobs and cleaner skies we would otherwise have to make to cut our own pollution.  It’s just so much cheaper for us to do it overseas.  If we have to do it here in the U.S., it will cut into our giant profits too much.  For example, the last American Electric Power quarterly profits rose 18% over last year to $443 million due to “higher rates charged its utility customers” despite lower demand for electricity.  We don’t need investments in green jobs and cleaner skies eating into that.  We want to keep our pockets well lined, thank you very much.

Until low-carbon technologies are widely available, U.S. companies need to have the ability to pay for low-cost, readily-available reductions wherever they may be found, which includes other countries. Put another way, allowing U.S. companies to invest in at least some reductions abroad, makes it possible to continue production here, allowing for a gradual transition of the U.S. economy to a low-carbon future. At the same time, international offsets give U.S. companies new export markets for low-carbon technologies made in this country.

TRANSLATION: We already have the technologies needed to dramatically reduce climate pollution, but we don’t want to pay for them.  We’d rather pretend that some miracle technology like “carbon capture and sequestration” will magically become effective and affordable in the future…and that we can’t take real action to clean up our acts until then.  Allowing U.S. polluters to buy their way out with cheap international offsets will allow us to slash investments in green jobs in the U.S. and continue to pollute American skies.  We want to avoid climate action as long as possible, so we can pass the buck to future generations of Americans.

International offset policies also offer an opportunity to address the serious problem of tropical deforestation, which causes 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions annually and threatens the survival of more than half of the world’s plant, insect, and animal species. International offsets therefore offer a win-win situation; they make it possible for the U.S. to address critical global environmental issues, while saving jobs here.

TRANSLATION: By taking credit for “avoided deforestation” projects, we can really side-step American green job/clean tech investments.  That’s because avoided deforestation offsets would be among the cheapest and most abundant in the world.  Why build windmills and invest green jobs in the American Heartland if we could – for much less – pay to keep trees standing in, say, Bolivia?  It’s super cheap, we get to keep polluting, and we’ll have money left over to run TV commercials showing pretty rainforest animals we’ll claim to be saving.  This is the ultimate greenwash, and if you’re lucky Senators, we’ll let you in on it.

It is important that any international offsets are as environmentally rigorous as domestic offsets, which means that offsets from other countries should be subject to review by the relevant agencies. International offset credits subject to such review should not be subject to any arbitrary discounts or other barriers, which can only diminish their cost containment potential.

TRANSLATION: For years, evidence has mounted showing offsets often don’t deliver what they’re supposed to.  So, we have to pretend to be really concerned about the quality of offsets.  But, what we really want is universal green stamp of approval that will make people believe our offsets are 100% reliable so we can trade them in carbon markets and make buckets of money.  Don’t set up standards that are too tough -- just tough (and confusing) enough for people to believe in them.  Carbon markets could be worth trillions of dollars in coming years!  We want our carbon cake and want to trade it too!

Finally, we believe that well-designed international offset policies can play a vital role in encouraging other countries to adopt appropriate limits on their emissions, which will further limit the competitiveness impacts of climate legislation on the U.S. economy. International offsets are a necessary component of our diplomatic efforts.

TRANSLATION: Polluters in developing countries don’t want to change their ways either.  By counting offsets as a replacement for real U.S. pollution cuts AND counting them as cuts in developing countries, we really game the system.  It’s called “double-counting.”  Nothing like a little creative accounting to confuse the situation and make it look like we’re doing more than we are to address global warming.  And, if anyone asks you, just tell them you’re doing this to “protect American competitiveness.”  That always works.

For these reasons, we strongly urge you, as you consider cap-and-trade legislation, to ensure that the program protects the vital cost-containment role of international offsets, and avoids any arbitrary barriers to the use of such credits.

TRANSLATION: We’re watching you.  And the 2010 elections are right around the corner.  We’re making our campaign contribution list right now.  Don’t mess this one up for us, or there will be hell to pay!

Sincerely,

Alpha Natural Resources, American Electric Power, DTE Energy, Dominion, The Dow Chemical Company, Duke Energy, DuPont, El Paso Corporation, Exelon, Southern Company, FPL Group, Intel, International Paper Company, NRG Energy, National Grid, PG&E Corporation, PNM Resources, Rio Tinto

Hey Activists!  This is my first time in the blogging world, and I'm here to write about what happened today in Chicago at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce meeting.



You may have already read in Tracy's blog that the U.S. Chamber is having meetings around the country this month. They stopped off in Philadelphia first, and then headed out my way to Chicago. You may have also seen in the national media that the Chamber is the center of a lot of controversy lately. Big name companies have left the Chamber, quit from the Chamber board, or publicly disagreed with the Chamber. These companies include Nike, Apple, Exelon, Levi Strauss, GE... the list goes on and on.  

Why aren't businesses and the Chamber seeing eye to eye? Doesn't the Chamber represent American business? Well, in the last 3 months alone, the Chamber spent $34 million dollars lobbying AGAINST reforms of all kinds. The Chamber has continually sided with overpaid CEO's against the interests of the average Americans, and it's very members aren't standing for it.



So who is the Chamber speaking for? Two small Chicago business owners headed to the conference today to learn more about the Chamber. Despite having paid premium non-member admission they were turned away at the door. Their tickets, businesses, and local Chamber memberships were not enough to allow them to attend the Chamber meeting. I met them across the street where they asked me and the Channel 7 News cameras, "Is small business not valued by the Chamber?"

So who is it that the Chamber is speaking for? They don't speak for Apple, Nike, GE, Microsoft and others...

And they certainly don't speak for small business owners in Chicago. It's a question I'd like to ask them, but as an average American they certainly wouldn't invite me to the meeting.

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.

We've all seen the horrific images of whaling. The harpoons. The sea turning red. It's a terrible vision and hopefully it may be a vision we won't have to see much longer!

We've just heard a bit of good news out of Japan. A major review of Japanese government spending could spell the end to whaling in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary.

The review committee, commissioned to cut wasteful programs by Japan's new government, has proposed massive cuts in subsidies to a body which funds the so-called whaling research program.  

 

Without government subsidies, the whaling program would be doomed.

The Spending Review Committee recommended that the Overseas Fisheries Cooperation Fund (OFCF), which gives loans to the Institute for Cetacean Research (ICR) to run the discredited science program, have all of its funding revoked, except money needed for loans in 2010.

The OFCF claims it needs $780 million for various programs, including whaling, in 2010. The Review Committee and Cabinet Office will determine by early next year if the proposed operations for 2010 are actually "necessary" or should also be cut.

Soon, President Obama will be in Japan meeting with the new Prime Minister. Perhaps, President Obama could bring up whale conservation in their discussions. Take action and tell the President that whales are important to save.

We're keeping our fins crossed that once, and for all, Japan will hang up their harpoons and leave the whales alone.

 

--Michelle

 

This morning, an international team of Greenpeace activists issued an urgent call to action to President Barack Obama from the heart of Indonesia's threatened rainforests by unfurling a banner in a freshly destroyed area of forest that reads "Obama: you can stop this."


© Greenpeace/John Novis

As Rolf wrote last week during the Barcelona climate talks, the United States continues to block progress in advance of critical UN climate negotiations that will take place in Copenhagen next month. The banner hang was meant to urge Obama to join with other world leaders and help avert a climate crisis by ending global deforestation, one of the quickest and most cost effective ways to lower carbon emissions and combat global warming.


© Greenpeace/John Novis

Global deforestation is responsible for about a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. Greenpeace estimates that ending global deforestation requires industrialized countries to invest $42 billion annually in forest protection.

While the banner was being deployed this morning, several other Greenpeace activists locked themselves to four excavators owned by Asia Pacific Resources International Holding Limited (APRIL), one of Indonesia’s biggest pulp and paper producers, to stop the company from destroying more rainforest to make way for tree plantations.

Over 50 Greenpeace activists from the Climate Defenders Camp on Indonesia's Kampar Peninsula take action against APRIL, one of Indonesia's biggest pulp and paper producers, to prevent it destroying the rainforest on the Kampar Peninsula to make way for tree plantations, grown for pulp and paper. © Greenpeace/Ardiles Rante

Check out lots more great photos in this slideshow:

President Obama, who will meet two days from now with 20 other Heads of State in Singapore to discuss Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), has promised to take decisive action on climate change. Yet his administration is actively undermining and stalling global climate change negotiations while the US Congress delays its vote on an inadequate bill.

It’s time for leadership. Help us send this message by signing our petition telling President Obama that it’s Time To Sign a fair, ambitious, and binding climate treaty.

Today’s action took place on the Kampar Peninsula on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where Greenpeace has set up a Climate Defenders Camp. Rainforest and peatland destruction in Indonesia emits huge quantities of CO2, causing the country to become the world’s third largest climate polluter after China and the US.

Greenpeace activists are also working to reduce carbon emissions by constructing dams in the area to stop paper companies from destroying the rainforest’s carbon rich peat soil, which contains approximately 2 billion tons of carbon. They will continue to protect the rainforest peatlands in coming weeks as December’s UN climate summit approaches.

To find more info and resources on deforestation in Indonesia and climate change, click 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.

 

News of the historic chemical security bill, just approved by the House of Representatives, has been heating up and spreading far and wide. Check out this editorial in the New York Times.

More than eight years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the House of Representatives has passed a bill to shore up security at this country’s chemical plants. The requirements are reasonable, vital and long overdue. If terrorists were to attack a chemical plant near an American city or large town, they could unleash a toxic cloud that could endanger the lives of hundreds of thousands.

Environmental groups, most notably Greenpeace, and organized labor have been pushing Congress to enact tough chemical plant security legislation, but the chemical industry — concerned about the cost — has long resisted.

The House bill is a carefully written compromise that is more than accommodating to the concerns of industry. It focuses only on the highest-risk plants, and it would make them use safer chemicals or processes only when the Department of Homeland Security determines that they are feasible and cost-effective.

Read more...

While we're excited the bill was approved by the House, now we have to stay focused on the Senate. Soon, they will take up chemical security legislation. We want the Senate legislation to be strong, too.

 

 

Take action! Tell your Senator it's time to introduce strong chemical security legislation in the Senate.

--Michelle

Here's a great video from the Greenpeace banner hang at Barcelona's Sagrada Família last week:

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

Eight years after the September 11th attacks, the House of Representatives today approved the “Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act of 2009,” (H.R. 2868) by a vote of 230 to 193. This is the first time either house of Congress has approved permanent and comprehensive chemical security legislation. 

“Although it’s a compromise, this bill represents a historic first step toward protecting the 100 million Americans living in the shadow of high-risk chemical plants,” said Rick Hind, legislative director of Greenpeace.  “It’s now time for the Senate to recognize the urgency of this issue and embrace common sense solutions that eliminate these risks once and for all,” said Hind.

Earlier this week, Clorox announced plans to convert all of their U.S. facilities from ultra-hazardous chlorine gas to liquid bleach to “strengthen our operations and add another layer of security,” according to their CEO Don Knauss. Clorox also indicated that these changes “won’t affect the size of the company’s workforce." 

Since 9/11 more than 200 chemical facilities have converted to safer chemical processes, eliminating poison gas risks to more than 30 million Americans. Yet 300 other chemical plants together put 110 million Americans at risk.

 “For the first time since the September 11th attacks Congress and the administration are in agreement on how to protect the millions of Americans at risk from chemical plants,” said Hind.

In addition, water utility groups and a coalition of more than 50 organizations are urging Congress to enact this legislation. They include: Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, the United Auto Workers, Steelworkers, Teamsters, Fire Fighters, Sierra Club, Physicians for Social Responsibility, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Environmental Defense Fund and Greenpeace. 

The House passed bill (H.R. 2868) will:

• Conditionally require the highest risk plants to use safer chemical processes where feasible and cost-effective and requires the remaining high risk plants to “assess” safer chemical processes;
• Eliminate the current law's exemption of thousands of chemical facilities, such as waste water and drinking water plants and port facilities;
• Involve plant employees in the development of security plans and provides protections for whistleblowers and limit background check abuses;
• Preserve state’s authority to establish stronger security standards;
• Provide funding for conversion of plants, including drinking water facilities and wastewater facilities, and
• Allow citizen suits to enforce government implementation of the law. 

As the last day of climate talks before the Copenhagen summit drew to a close, Greenpeace activists attached a banner reading "Climate chaos: Who is to blame?" to Barcelona’s Columbus Monument, which points to America. The US delegation has emerged as one of the chief obstructions to progress at the talks that took place in Barcelona this week.




Images © Greenpeace/Pedro Armestre

Today's action was the final one of a series of actions Greenpeace did this week in Barcelona. Check out pics from our banner hang at Sagrada Família and the "extreme weather event" we created to show delegates what lies in store for the planet if global warming goes unchecked.

If the political courage of the developed world’s leaders remains missing in action, then we won’t have a deal in Copenhagen. And despite their best efforts to continue floating half-measures and make them stick, consensus is not forming around a deal with weak emissions targets. Developing countries are pushing back and fighting for their survival.
 
We singled out President Obama, however, because his actions fall so far short of his promises to “restore science to its proper place” and lead the world’s response to global warming. He has stood aside while Congress let the fossil fuel industry hijack its climate legislation. And on the international scene, he has been silent while his negotiators obstruct the progress on a treaty intended to deal with the most pressing environmental crisis of our time.

Write to President Obama now and tell him that it’s time to sign a fair, ambitious, and binding climate treaty.

One year ago President Obama was elected and my hopes for a clean energy future soared.  However, just two weeks ago, that hope began to be blown away in West Virginia when Massey Energy began dynamiting Coal River Mountain—the site of a proposed 328-megawatt wind farm—to prepare for a massive mountaintop removal coal mining operation.

 

But today, organizations from across the country are coming together to demand that President Obama’s Administration be a leader for both clean energy and communities and stop the blasting on Coal River Mountain. In fact, it’s the biggest online action to stop mountain top removal coal mining in history.

Can you take a moment right now to tell the Obama Administration to not blast away our clean energy future?

Here’s what’s at stake:

-The homes, healthy air, streams and ecosystems of the local residents of Coal River Mountain.

-A Coal River Mountain wind farm that would provide 85,000 households with electricity, 700 long-term green jobs, give back $1.7 million in annual county taxes and stand as a model for clean energy across the region.

-The health of the climate as when burning the coal pumps tons upon tons of carbon into the atmosphere of an already dangerously warming planet.

The EPA has the power to either protect the climate and the communities of Coal River Mountain, or it can allow the creation of a 6,000-acre dirty energy wasteland.

You can make a difference today by taking one minute right now to tell the Obama Administration to support clean energy and save Coal River Mountain.

With your help, we can make the clean energy revolution a reality. As my colleague from Rainforest Action Network, Scott Parkin, says

“Coal River Mountain must become our line in the sand. We can no longer allow fossil fuel interests to build more pipelines, belch out more pollution, and destroy more mountains that could become clean energy wind farms. If we can stop the blasting on Coal River Mountain we can stop talking about a clean energy future and start living in a clean energy present.”

 

Greenpeace activists staged an extreme weather event today for delegates at the UN climate talks in Barcelona, Spain to give them a taste of what the future will look like if they don’t create the right conditions for a fair, ambitious and binding climate deal in Copenhagen next month.

Amidst a mock storm of thunder, lightning, rain and wind outside the Barcelona conference center, the Greenpeace activists deployed a banner that read “Our climate, your decision”.



© Pedro Armestre/Greenpeace


© Pedro Armestre/Greenpeace


© Pedro Armestre/Greenpeace

The really bad news is that, according to reports coming out of Barcelona, it is the US that is the biggest threat to the deal the world needs in Copenhagen. Rolf has all the dirt on the excuses the US delegation is making in his post, "Call to Action: US obstructing Barcelona talks." There's also a sample script and numbers you can use to call Secretary of State Hilary Clinton or US climate envoy Todd Stern to let them know that you expect the US to lead the world's response to climate change, not obstruct those efforts.

If you haven't made a call, please make one now. If you have made a call, consider calling again. The Obama Adminstration needs to hear from us that we expect the leadership that then-candidate Obama promised on global warming.

This semester, I’ve worked with student activists who have coal plants on campus — you know, those antiquated, decades-old, polluting machines that fill the air with toxins like mercury, arsenic, and millions of tons of global warming pollution. At Iowa State University, a monster coal plant looms in the center of campus. The plant consumes over 150,000 tons of coal a year — that's one half the weight of the Empire State Building!

Iowa State had been dumping fly ash from the coal plant into unlined storage ponds, which is incredibly dangerous due to the risk of contaminating ground water supplies (our drinking water) with numerous deadly toxins. Upon learning about this, Greenpeace campus coordinator Graham Jordison organized a protest on the first day of school. The protest generated several media hits and started a conversation on campus about the plant. A nervous university administration quickly issued a public statement vowing to address the issue.

Weeks later, all 3 of the main public universities in Iowa, including Iowa State, announced that they would begin a ground-water monitoring program for the fly ash disposal. Talk about power of the people!

One week after this announcement, Graham and his team met with the university president to thank him, and ask him to shut down the coal plant and replace it with clean, renewable sources like wind power. Although the students didn't get a commitment to close the plant, the President and his administration are definitely listening as the students continue to demand clean energy on campus. Graham said it best when quoted in a newspaper article: “We’re not afraid to step it up, get our activists together and do some non-violent actions. Whatever it takes to get the school to wake up and realize students want this to change.”

Photo: Iowa State student activists protesting at the campus coal plant.

The story is unfinished at Iowa State or at your school, but there is only one ending in which we all win. This ending has 100% clean, renewable energy, where coal is no longer part of our vocabulary. To make this happen, we need leaders to fight for the environment. Join Graham, Iowa State, and the Student Network as we fight for the only planet we’ve got.

Let’s make sure President Obama transitions our country to clean, renewable energy. Send a message to President Obama right now!

For more information about the Student Network, visit our website and friend us on Facebook!

Send me an email right now and I’ll get you started organizing for climate action at your school.

For the climate,

David

One of the weird consequences of overfishing is the very real possibility that jellyfish will replace the niche left by fish species. It makes for nice scary pieces of news, like this bit out of Japan. A ten-ton fishing boat was capsized after dozens of giant jellyfish were caught in their net. As the crew tried to haul the net onboard, the boat started to capsize and they were thrown into the sea.

The three men are safe. Thankfully, another trawler in the area was able to rescue them.

If we are about to be taken over by jellyfish, let's try to look on the bright side. Maybe they taste good? Maybe they're healthy for us to eat. I really can’t say, but perhaps we should be open-minded.

British cartoonist Steven Appleby tried to find a way we could cook jellyfish. And, at the rate our oceans are being overfished, you'll want to watch this video, just to be sure you're well-prepared.

 

Most people here in Barcelona I think would say 'slow progress' is an exaggerated description of the state of climate negotations. For a recent issue of Eco, the daily newsletter of Climate Action Network-International, I wrote this article which goes over a couple elements that may be mucking up negotations as well as confusing domestic discussion of climate legislation.

Many voices are complaining that the US delegation has put no numbers on the table, but there is one number that just keeps popping up. That number is 2005, the base year for the Kerry-Boxer climate legislation.

Even though it was four years ago, 2005 just happens to be the year of the highest US emissions in history. Obviously, reducing 20% of emissions from a higher pool means less reductions. Kerry-Boxer aims to reduce 7% below 1990. Using 2005 base year allows for a more ambitious sounding target.

In Barcelona this proposed base year of 2005 distorts an important discussion on 'comparability' and has become a red herring in assessment of the adequacy of the scale of mitigation targets.

The US delegation often seems to insinuate that 1990 was just an arbitrary base year. Of course, 1990 was not selected at random: it was the year of the IPCC’s First Assessment Report; the year when the world began negotiating what became the Convention.  

But arbitrary or not, shifting to a different base year like 2005 allows the US to imply that the EU proposed mitigation target of 20% by 2020 relative to 1990 is about as ambitious as that in the US legislation. In effect, this amounts to suggesting that emissions reductions elsewhere between 1990 and 2005 are irrelevant to negotiations today.  The comparison we really should be making is the distance between the proposals on the table and what the science is saying we have to do.   

Countries may find it domestically convenient to use a different baseline year, but this presents several problems. Converting reporting data from one country to another appears to be simple enough in theory. But in practice, measurement, reporting and verification requires comparing apples to apples. Converting multiple data points across multiple countries using a variety of different baselines is a convenient recipe for confusion and avoiding the big picture (remember? 'compare the targets to what the science demands').  So even if the experts can provide conversion formulas for differing baselines, there is still a question of public transparency and accountability.

And finally, if the baseline changes, so must the targets. Were we to use a 2005 baseline, the IPCC says global emissions should come down 35-50% by 2020 (as opposed to 25-40% with a 1990 baseline). In the context of history and science, using 1990 is not at all arbitrary. 

Yesterday I reported on a Greenpeace banner hang at the UN climate talks in Barcelona, as well as the fact that several African nations had walked out of the negotiations in protest of the weak emissions reductions targets commitments made by developed nations.

I mentioned in that post that the talks were to resume today, but also noted that I didn't know what resolution had been reached to allow talks to resume. Today, via The Associated Press, we have our answer:

BARCELONA, Spain — African countries ended a boycott of meetings at U.N. climate negotiations on Tuesday, after winning promises for more in-depth talks on how much rich nations need to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Due to the Africans' demands, most of the rest of this week's talks in Barcelona will be devoted to discussing carbon-cutting pledges rather than other issues including carbon offsets and action by developing countries, said John Ash, chairman of the negotiations on emissions.

The Africans, supported by about 70 other developing countries, said industrial nations were making weak commitments to stave off dramatic temperature rises while Africa was being devastated by droughts and floods blamed on global warming.

Scientists say industrial countries should reduce emissions by 25 to 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, but targets announced so far amount to far less.

...

"It's really good that the Africans have finally been able to stand up together," said Fiona Musana of Johannesburg-based Greenpeace Africa. "That sends a strong signal."

Of course, low emissions targets aren't the only ways the leaders of the developed world are attempting to shirk their responsibility to solve the climate crisis. Jess, blogging on Greenpeace International's Climate Rescue Weblog, reports that negotiators for developed countries are now arguing for a "politically binding" agreement as opposed to a "legally binding" agreement:

The climate negotiations have arrived at yet another war over words that might prove detrimental to a deal in Copenhagen this December. Check this one out - developing countries are demanding that negotiators stick to the commitment of a legally binding treaty while developed countries seem to be pleased with showboating their new idea of a politically binding agreement. Sound like just semantics to you? May sound like it but consider this: When was the last time you trusted a promise that a politician made to you before they took steps to make good on it?

...

“I do not know anything called a politically binding agreement. They are worth very little. Tell me of any politician that delivered on their (election) manifesto,” Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, a delegate with Sudan.

OK, so maybe it sounds like a whole lot of unwarranted distrust to you, so let’s use President Obama as an example. I campaigned and voted for President Obama based on the promises he made. As someone that cares about the environment, I was inspired by his statements about leading the world in the fight against climate change. After he was elected, he talked about returning science to its rightful place and leading the world in a solution to the climate crisis. But just 32 days out, where is the leadership and return to science that my President Obama promised? How much longer do I trust in promises without any accountability?

Where is the accountability, indeed. We now learn that, far from providing the leadership that was promised by Obama, the US is actually doing its best to undermine negotiations in Barcelona. If you're as fed up with this lack of leadership as I am, you can call Obama's Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, right now — click here for the number and a suggested script.

I had the pleasure of spending the last two weeks with a terrific crew of Greenpeace activists, our GOT students, and volunteers from around Vermont.  We organized events in Montpelier, Rutland and Burlington with our One World hot-air balloon.  We had state representatives, business leaders, other environmental groups and community members come out to the events to address the crowds.  The best quote came from State Representative Paul Poirier who said something like: “I’m no nuclear engineer, just a regular guy, but know that we can’t have Vermont Yankee around any longer.”

The balloon tour highlighted the fact that Vermont doesn't need nuclear power.  We have local renewable companies that could replace the plant's energy, which would put our money into the hands of our friends and neighbors rather than in Entergy's pockets.  Vermonters are standing up across the state to call for a clean energy future, and we hope you are too.

No nukes in Vermont!
-Jarred

This week in Barcelona, Spain, the United Nations climate change negotiations are tasked with setting the table for the long-awaited talks in Copenhagen. A lot of preparation needs to happen to create a fair, ambitious, and legally binding international treaty in December.

However, halfway through the week-long talks, that important work is not getting done. And the biggest impediment to progress in Barcelona is the United States. There are three main things the U.S. needs to do to move things forward:

1. Make ambitious science-based commitments to reduce its climate pollution (between 25-40% below 1990 levels by the year 2020).
2. Commit to deliver its share of funding to developing countries so they can slash climate pollution and deal with the effects of global warming.
3. Agree to an international treaty that will be legally-binding and enforceable.

But the U.S. delegation is claiming it cannot negotiate important issues without climate change legislation first being passed by Congress. There are three big problems with that excuse:

First, the bills have been corrupted by big polluters. They simply do not deliver anything close to what scientists say is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change. Low emissions cuts targets and loopholes in the bills allow for dirty business as usual.

Second, even if the legislation was science-based and effective, Congress does not time before December to pass the bills. 

Third, the President is charged with leading U.S. foreign policy and negotiating treaties, not Congress. President Obama should not take the back seat as a slow-moving Congress drives U.S. climate policy towards failure.

The clock is ticking towards Copenhagen. We have about thirty days before those talks begin. Our climate and our future are too important to let political excuses get in the way of real action. 

Please call the person in charge of the U.S. delegation in Barcelona — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — at 202-647-5291 and tell her the U.S. needs to lead climate talks, not drag them down.

If you cannot get through on the number above call the lead U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern: 202-647-9884.

Use your own words, but here is a sample call script you can work from:

My name is _______, calling from ________. I'm calling because I think climate change is the single most important issue facing the world, and I understand that the US is continuing to obstruct real progress at the U.N. talks in Barcelona. This is outrageous, and it's not what the American people voted for when they elected President Obama a year ago.

It's time for U.S. leadership to stop listening to industry and start listening to science. We need a fair, legally enforceable treaty at Copenhagen, not more foot-dragging in Barcelona.

Spread the word — tell your friends and family to make a call today. You can use that retweet button on the top right of this post, or use those little icons up under the title of this blog to post a link to your Facebook, send an email, or post to most any other social network.

For the climate,

-Rolf

We’re now just over a month away from the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, which commence on Dec. 7th. World leaders are currently meeting this week in Barcelona, Spain for the last time before Copenhagen. These meetings are crucial to establishing a fair, ambitious, and binding climate treaty in December, yet early signs are not good. Greenpeace activists are there reminding world leaders of their moral obligation to solve the climate crisis. And we’re not the only ones protesting: Several African nations walked out of the meetings to point out that the developed world was simply pursuing business as usual.

Barcelona’s famous church, Sagrada Família, which was designed by renowned architect Antoni Gaudí, was the scene of a series of stunning banner hangs by Greenpeace activists on the first day of the talks. Check out these amazing pics:


More than twenty Greenpeace activists climbed the Sagrada Família, Gaudí's monument, in Barcelona, Spain. They deployed two banners at the cranes with the message "Save the climate" — in Spanish, "Salvad el clima." Greenpeace is asking world leaders to make the climate call and to take the responsibility for tackling climate change. © Greenpeace/Pedro Armestre


Greenpeace activists hold a banner that reads "Activist for the climate" in Spanish. © Greenpeace/Pedro Armestre


Greenpeace activists deploy a banner at Barcelona's Sagrada Familia that reads "World leaders, Make the climate call." © Greenpeace/Pedro Armestre

There’s also video of the activists deploying the clear banner at twilight:


But like I said before, Greenpeace is not alone in protesting the dithering of developed countries on climate change. The so-called African Group walked out of the meetings when it became clear that developed countries were not willing to set aggressive emissions reductions targets. Greenpeace New Zealand campaigner Geoff Keey is on the ground, and posted this report:

The first signs of trouble occurred in the morning when the African Group (the group of African countries at the negotiations who work together) warned that if there wasn’t sufficient progress in the negotiations on developed country emission reduction targets, they’d walk about and not allow further meetings to be scheduled.

The African Group’s threat reflects increasing frustration over the refusal of developed countries like New Zealand to adopt strong climate change targets.

Then in the afternoon, the chair of the meeting to discuss developed country targets told countries to not restate their targets (e.g. New Zealand’s nothing - 20% target) but to talk about how they could increase those targets. In other words, current proposed targets are well below what’s needed.

The request from the chair of the negotiations was met with complete silence from developed countries for around five minutes before South Africa finally said they were disappointed no developed country was willing to speak. From then on a walk-out was inevitable.

According to Jess Miller, another Greenpeacer on the ground in Barcelona, the walk-out has ended and talks will resume tomorrow. No word yet on what resolution was reached between the African Group and developed nations, but Jess adds that “the walk out by the African Group proved to be an effective way to get developed countries to realize that business as usual will no longer be tolerated!”

A bit of background on why the Barcelona talks are important: In December of 2007, the world's leaders agreed to spend two years crafting a global treaty to stave off the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. The talks happening right now in Barcelona are the last milestone on the road to the UN negotiations that will take place in Copenhagen at the end of the year. The aim of the Copenhagen talks is to establish a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. Meetings like those going on in Barcelona have happened consistently throughout the past two years, and were intended to be used for laying the groundwork for a successor climate treaty. Alas, little to no progress has been made in the previous rounds of talks.

Hence why the African Group was absolutely right to walk out when developed nations refused to discuss ambitious emissions targets, and why Greenpeace is there on the ground to remind world leaders that it is their moral obligation to lead the world’s response to global warming. Copenhagen is our last, best chance to avert the worst impacts of global warming, and the developing nations of the world will be hit the hardest if we don’t get it right, even though they had an inordinately small role in creating the problem in the first place.

GPUSA climate campaign head Damon Moglen is in Barcelona, and said this of the walk-out by the African Group: “It is clear that for many countries, enough is enough. President Obama can no longer hide behind failed congressional legislation. He must provide ambitious, science-based emissions reductions targets.”

President Obama has the power to use this meeting as a springboard to the treaty that the world needs. If the US fails to show leadership during these crucial moments, our children and grandchildren will pay the price. Take action now and tell Obama that it's time to sign a fair, ambitious, and binding climate treaty.

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

I’m back in San Francisco after the Defending Our Pacific tour wrapped up in the Cook Islands on October 21st. We ended the tour by hosting an “open boat,” where a couple hundred locals and tourists got the chance to tour the Esperanza, and by holding a press conference to inform local journalists about what we accomplished out on the high seas.

We also met with some folks from the Ministery of Marine Resources in the Cook Islands. It was a pretty exciting meeting for all of us, because just the week before we had busted the Koyu Maru 3, a Japanese ship we caught fishing in Cook Islands' waters illegally, as you might recall. The Cook Islands has started a formal investigation of the vessel with their counterparts at the Fisheries Agency of Japan. I’ll be posting updates on that as well as on how all of the actions and documentation work we did plays out at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) meeting this December, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, being that the tour was a really amazing experience for me and seeing as I’m still trying to process all of it, I thought I’d share just a few more videos about life onboard a Greenpeace ship.

We saw an abundance of amazing marine life, including dolphins, whales, flying fish, seabirds, and more. Here’s a video of a baby whale shark we encountered one day:


Our helicopter, Tweety, is an invaluable tool that we use to scout out the open water, document pirate/unlicensed fishing, etc. I went on one early morning heli flight to search for another two Japanese longliners, which we suspected might be fishing in the Cook Islands' waters with their sister ship the Koyu Maru 3. We didn't find them, but I put this video together anyway because I think it's interesting how a heli flight gives you a whole new perspective on just how small the Espy really is in relation to the deep blue sea:

 Lastly, I shot this video tour of the ship, which is pretty self-explanatory:

Like I said, there are definitely more updates coming on the political developments resulting from the actions we took and the documentation we compiled of the vessels plundering the Pacific. When the WCPFC meets this December, we’ll be pushing to have all four of the high seas pockets in the Pacific designated as marine reserves at this meeting.

There might be a few more videos coming from the tour, as well. Keep checking back!

We've been pressuring Trader Joe's to adopt sustainable seafood purchasing policies throughout all of their stores—for months. But, they still haven't changed their ways.

Store managers and corporate big-wigs have felt the heat from Greenpeace's mock website, relentless phone calls from supporters, poignant karaoke songs from shoppers and in-store demonstrations across the country.

Have they been ignoring the public's cries for ocean protection? Or are they simply unwilling to tell the truth about their actions to their consumers?

Whatever the reason for their complete lack of responsibility, it's high-time to turn up the heat, once again. Ocean conservation is too important to ignore!

Please, take action today! Tell Merchandising V.P., Matt Sloan, to clear up the story for Trader Joe's with this simple message: "We're still waiting for Trader Joe's sustainable seafood policy!"

We will continue to demand sustainable seafood until Trader Joe's makes that a reality. 

 

 

Greenpeace received word this morning that Clorox will be switching production methods at all of its factories to eliminate the use of chlorine gas. This will eliminate the risk of injury or death to 13 million Americans in the case of an accident or attack on one of these plants. This announcement also provides Congress with another good reason to pass comprehensive chemical security legislation being taken up in the House on Wednesday of this week.

“By leading the way in eliminating the potential consequences of a catastrophic terrorist attack or accident, Clorox’s announcement also provides Congress with compelling new evidence to enact chemical plant security legislation,” said Rick Hind, Greenpeace legislative director. 

Take action and tell Congress to put safety first, too. 

This week I traveled from my post as a Field Organizer in Baltimore up the well-seasoned train tracks of the mid-Atlantic to Philadelphia to help out Jillian, my fellow Organizer based in PA. Looking out the window on the train ride, the skyline was spotted with coal-fired power plants and massive chemical facilities. Although I admittedly see the world through an activist's eyes, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the fight we have ahead of us if we want to convert our country to a clean energy economy and break free from our addictions to fossil fuels and the stronghold that industry has on our way of life.

I made the trip to Philly to help organize a last-minute rally held today to draw attention to the fact that this business as usual won’t do, and that the American people, the labor community and business owners from coast to coast are ready to attack climate change head on.



This week, the United States Chamber of Commerce held a Regional Government Affairs Conference in Philadelphia. Speaking at the conference today was the Chamber President Tom Donohue. The chamber has been the source of much media attention in recent months as their stance on climate change and health care reform have been drawn into question. Among the various headlines we learned that the group, which is comprised of thousands of businesses ranging from your local diner to giants like Nike, has spent $34 million this year lobbying against clean energy and health care reform legislation.  

What Greenpeace and a slew of other groups, businesses, and most importantly the American public have realized is that Tom Donohue and his Chamber are lying about climate change. By doing this they are only representing a few corporate CEOs and not American businesses and the public. That’s why major corporations like Apple, PG&E and Levi’s are quitting the chamber, because they understand the severity of, and are committed to tackling, climate change. By fighting real progress, they argue, the Chamber is not accurately representing the views and priorities of its members.  

So at noon today, a chilly fall day in Philadelphia, while Donohue spoke to the crowd inside, we stood outside on a busy street corner, about one hundred strong, to tell him that he can’t speak for us anymore. Addressing our crowd were health care advocates, environmentalists and labor union members. What brought us all together is what is uniting Americans in communities everywhere: we came out in droves at this time last year to vote for then-Senator Obama because we believed he would sideline people like Tom Donahue and because we won’t stand for lies about climate change anymore. You don’t have to be an expert to know that climate change is the greatest challenge of our time and we can’t afford the policies of the past if we want a shot at a sound future.



I had a great trip up to Pennsylvania, and not because I spent time with a colleague I rarely see and got to meet her wonderful volunteers, or because I got to watch the Phillies beat the dreaded Yankees (although that was all memorable). It was a great trip because as I sit writing this on the train back down to Baltimore I look out at the smoke stacks and I don’t feel that overwhelming challenge of a country barreling down the tracks to climate destruction. I feel a real sense of pride to be part of a growing grassroots movement in this country that has had too many years of the status quo and is finally standing as a united front to call on the true culprits to use their power for good and stop climate change before it’s too late.

Greenpeace activists in two inflatable boats intercepted a ship, the Izmuir Castle, as it carried more than 15,000 tons of palm kernel oil into the French port of Montoir-de-Bretagne this morning.  Palm oil plantations are a leading cause of forest destruction in Indonesia and other southeast Asian nations.  The activists painted "Climate Crime" on the hull of the huge cargo ship.  Eleven activists climbed on top of three cranes that were unloading contents of the ship and unfurled banners reading "Funding for forest protection, not their destruction."

This happened while the European Union leaders met to discuss if they’d put on the table to help developing countries fight and deal with global warming.  It’s also on the eve of United Nations climate negotiations in Barcelona next week.

The action is part of an international Greenpeace effort to get world leaders to invest in tropical forest protection for our climate.

While everyone seems to agree that tropical deforestation must be tackled to deal with global warming, few world leaders seem ready to actually do anything about it...and forests continue to fall.  Most conspicuous is President Obama who needs to show the world that the U.S. is ready to lead the fight against global warming.

What needs to be done?  Simple.  Developed nations should pool money together, mostly from their polluting industries, and create a financial incentive for countries with tropic forests to protect forests for our climate.  In the lead up to the United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Greenpeace created a proposal to do just that.

To motivate Obama and world leaders, Greenpeace launched a Climate Defenders Camp this week in the Kampar Peninsula peat forests of Indonesia.  Check out photos of the Kampar Peninsula here.

The Climate Defenders Camp has attracted international media attention as they deployed giant banners calling for forest funding, began damming illegally-drained peatlands, and worked to amplify the voice of local communities.  The action at the Climate Defenders Camp is just warming up.  You can read more first-hand accounts, see videos and get daily updates here.

The peat soils of the Kampar, which have built up over ages, store an estimated 2 billion tons of carbon, forming one of the world’s largest carbon stores on land.  When these forest are drained and burned to make way for tree farms and palm oil plantations, the consequences for our climate, and the rainforest species that depend on them, is devastating.

Learn more about peatland forests and global warming in the video below.  And stay tuned as we continue to defend forests for our climate!

-Rolf

On Saturday, October 24th, thousands of people came together calling on our world leaders to act on climate change. The Greenpeace Student Network held events across the country that got over 600 people out on campus or in the streets calling for climate action!

Here are a few highlights:

At Iowa State University, student activists marched with community members to the campus coal plant. Chanting, “no coal is clean coal, clean coal’s a dirty lie,” nearly 30 people came together to demand that Iowa State’s president power past coal. The event had great media coverage and was well received even by workers at the coal plant who were actually smiling and waving when they saw the demonstration!

 
In New York, student activists at SUNY Geneseo held a rally on campus. They had several speakers, including their university president. Over 100 people attended the rally, which wrapped up with a large photo op on the campus lawn. This photo was shown on the TV screens in Times Square with the message to world leaders: “You pick our future.”

 
In North Carolina, student activists from UNC Wilmington held a 5-hour event, which included a full lineup of speakers, music, and a candle light vigil march through the streets of downtown Wilmington. For a city located just miles from the Atlantic Ocean, the event was fittingly called “Turning the Tide,” and brought together over 100 people. Check out a short video of the event!

From rallies to marches, photo ops, and phone calls to President Obama, student activists were heard loud and clear on October 24th. Our movement is growing, and when it comes to climate action from President Obama and world leaders, we won’t take no for an answer!

Visit the Student Network website to get involved today!

You can view more event photos on our Facebook page.

For the climate,

David

Greenpeace has been working for four years on trying to develop an alternative to marine reserves in Alaska, especially in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea, and now in the vast and still somewhat pristine Arctic Ocean. It should come as no surprise that the ecosystems of these once rich and living oceans are fast becoming laboratories on how not to manage, as though man could, environments delicate and complex. Because it has been politically impossible to create the successful and ocean repairing marine reserves, we have been looking at creating marine cultural heritage zones (CHZ) in and around coastal communities as well as critical habitats within our country’s 200 mile exclusive economic zones (EEZ) here in Alaska.

And today we are another very important step closer to realizing our dreams. The Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) is the largest statewide Native organization in Alaska. Its membership includes 178 villages (both federally-recognized tribes and village corporations), 13 regional Native corporations and 12 regional nonprofit and tribal consortiums that contract and run federal and state programs. This organization has and continues to successfully represent our people in Congress, with businesses, and the State of Alaska. Just a week ago, AFN unanimously adopted a resolution requesting the creation and establishment of CHZ’s to protect our foods and the habitats upon which they depend for survival. This task, given a birth by our State’s Alaska Natives remains a daunting task. The lobbyists, lawyers and politicians of the billion dollar a year industry, the commercial fishing industry, will be fighting the development every step of the way. However, one of the most powerful traits of our people is the strong attitude of patience. If nothing else we are a very patient people, and we will see this priority to fruition. We were here before our waters were destroyed and we will be here when the commercial fishers move on. This is home. What we envision CHZ’s will do is similar to what marine reserves do but with more local input in uses and management.

We want to find a way to move destructive fishing practices away from our homes and critical habitat and involve local and traditional knowledge to the management of these protected zones. We the Unangan (Aleut), Yupik and Inupiat Eskimo invite you to join, what most surely will be, our long vigil to protect our waters, our homes, our foods and the food upon which they depend. Offshore oil drillers, large commercial fishing conglomerates and fish stick sellers are a seemingly powerful group. If we work together to stop the slow death affecting our waters and our environments, we will succeed. We the Alaska Native people are not quitting, for we know our ancestors worked to ensure our survival with our bounty. Join our work.

Greenpeace is working tirelessly to join our peoples of Alaska, our peoples of the Arctic to ensure a healthy planet. A patient journey guided by the wisdom of our ancient peoples cannot fail. We are all necessary parts of this walk, a walk together that must realize the dreams of all our peoples; to live where plants and animals are not our enemies but rather our co-inhabitants of this beautiful planet.

I'm on the ground in Sumatra at Greenpeace's Climate Defenders Camp. We're here to let world leaders know that this is ground zero for deforestation and if immediate action isn't taken to end the destruction of our rainforests, climate catastrophe is all but assured.

Southeast Asia is the region most exposed to and least prepared for the impacts of climate change, according to the Asian Development Bank. The ADB warns that the poor — and especially women — are the most vulnerable. Approximately 2.2 billion Asians are subsistence farmers; they are already experiencing falling crop yields caused by floods, droughts, erratic rainfall and other climate change impacts.

As well as supporting biodiversity and forest-dwelling communities, forests and their soils are huge carbon stores; they contain nearly 300 billion tones of carbon. That is 40 times more carbon than we currently emit to the atmosphere every year.

© Greenpeace / John Novis

Tropical forest destruction accounts for about a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all the world's trains, planes and cars put together. Therefore, we can only avert a climate crisis if world leaders commit to deep and binding cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions from both fossil fuels and deforestation at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen.

Globally, more than one million hectares of forest, mostly tropical rainforest, is destroyed every month — that is an area of forest the size of a soccer field every two seconds. Destruction and degradation of forests drives climate change in two ways. First, the clearing and burning of forests releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; and second, the area of forest that absorbs carbon dioxide is reduced. Their role in regulating the climate is so crucial that if we destroy the last tropical forests, we will likely lose the battle against climate change.

INDONESIA'S RAINFORESTS AND PEATLANDS


On the ground, it's easy to see the massive destruction that has taken place here. A drive through the Kampar Peninsula reveals acre after acre of forest conversion from healthy rainforest to palm oil plantations. There is no sign of animal life or biodiversity — just row after row of palm. The roads are congested with trucks carrying out palm kernels and the sky is filled with the smoke from hundreds of fires set to clear the land for planting.


Riau Andalah Pulp and Paper Company owned by the April Group. © Greenpeace / Daniel Beltrá

Indonesia is a stark example of the need for a robust plan and the provision of international funds to protect tropical forests. According to the latest available figures, it has one of the fastest rates of deforestation. This emits so much CO2 that Indonesia is the third largest climate polluter, after China and the US.

The reason these emissions are so high is twofold. It is caused by the rapid rate of deforestation, and the drainage and burning of the carbon rich peat soil the forests grow on. Deforestation of tropical forests is driven by global demand for products like paper, palm oil (which is used in toothpaste), chocolate, and as a biofuel. Since 1950, over 182 million acres of Indonesia's rainforests have been destroyed completely and others have been seriously degraded.

In a recent report, the Indonesian Government identified the oil palm, pulp and paper, agriculture, and logging industries as those primarily responsible for draining peat, for destroying its forests, and for causing the country's enormous CO2 emissions. It predicts that, unless action is taken, these emissions will continue to increase.

However, the government continues to hand out the concessions that allow these companies to destroy the remaining rainforest. The Indonesian government has laws to protect some of these carbon-rich peat areas but it fails to enforce the law and even continues to grant permits to companies to destroy them. Under Indonesian law, it is prohibited to develop or clear the forest and to drain any peat if it is deeper than three meters. Over 80% of Kampar's peat is deeper than that, but companies are still granted licenses to destroy its forests and peatlands. Only 10% of the peatlands that remain intact are officially "protected". The remaining 90% is under immediate threat, encircled by encroaching pulp and paper companies. They have been allocated for conversion in spite of the law.

THE COPENHAGEN SOLUTION

International governments give companies that are destroying the rainforest here an incentive to keep up business as usual and drive climate change by allowing imports of paper and palm oil products that come from forest destruction. With the UN Copenhagen Climate Summit just around the corner, the Heads of State of developed countries must show real leadership and secure a robust climate deal in December that includes a global funding mechanism that will transfer $42 billion annually from industrialized countries to poor forested countries like Indonesia, Congo, and Brazil, with the aim of ending deforestation by 2020. Such a deal must deliver substantial emissions reductions from deforestation as well as protect wildlife and respect the rights of forest dwelling people. It must also ensure that money does not end up in the hands of those responsible for forest destruction, like those in the logging industry.

Greenpeace is also calling on Indonesia's President Yudhoyono to commit to zero deforestation by 2015 in Indonesia and to implement an immediate moratorium on the destruction of forests and peatlands to give the climate some breathing space while the forest protection plans are put into action.

President Obama can do his part by coming to Copenhagen to attend the negotiations himself and help push other world leaders to commit to funding solutions to end deforestation. Obama must show leadership now by pushing Congress to pass legislation that will cap our emissions at the levels scientists say is safe and that will help pay for a global funding mechanism for forests. The bills in Congress are too weak and the international talks are veering off course. Now is the time for action from President Obama.

Cross posted at The Huffington Post

I don't have to tell you that the threats that face the planet are absolutely dire. People are doing things they never imagined in hopes of ensuring that our children's children have a planet that is livable.

What keeps me inspired through all of this? Working with youth that are willing to put their lives on hold, to join the Greenpeace Organizing Term. Every semester, 25-30 students are taking time off of school, fundraising to cover tuition, convincing parents to let them join, and moving their lives sometimes across the country to learn how to become leaders in the environmental movement.

The Greenpeace Organizing Term is a semester long program where students learn basic to advanced campaign and grassroots organizing skills. Students spend 12 weeks learning how to build the movement back home, pressure big corporations and elected officials, and how to inspire coming generations of environmental activists.

During the program students' travel to work on campaigns in the field, where they get to use their new skills on Greenpeace campaigns. On their expedition trip, they get a chance to see how environmental issues effect global communities, and have a chance to support those communities through organizing. .

Check out this awesome slideshow that we put together of a few of our over 200 alumni sharing why they decided to take a stand:

Do you want to be apart of this growing movement of youth who are willing to take a stand for the environment? Check out the G.O.T.’s website for more info and to apply!

The Organizing Term is an amazing experience for current undergraduate students who are 18-24. If you are, or know someone whois currently a student who is passionate about environmental change, check out our site at http://www.greenpeace.org/got and apply today for our Spring 2010 semester!

Today Greenpeace is joining 350.org and a massive coalition of organizations and grassroots activists around the world to demand world leaders do what is necessary to stop global warming. I'll be updating this blog post throughout the October 24th International Day of Climate Action with news and photos from events around the country and around the world. You can also follow Greenpeace USA on Twitter.

Twitter Updates

Live Blog

October 24 9:19 PM EST It has been an amazing day of climate action with over 4,000 events all over the world. We have made it clear to world leaders that people everywhere demand a fair, ambitious and binding UN climate deal in Copenhagen this December. As I close shop for this one momentous day I urge folks to remember what dirty energy does to our world and our communities everyday. In the words of Greenpeace Executive Director, Phil Radford, who spoke today at Chicago's march on Fisk Coal-Fired Power station:

Dirty energy is giving asthma to kids in President Obama’s hometown and pushing our planet toward a global warming catastrophe.  It’s time for Obama to live up to his promises to return science to its rightful place and stop letting coal and oil industry lobbyists write our nation’s energy policy. The world can’t afford anything less.

 9:03 PM EST Photos from Boulder's Power Past Coal Bike Ride to Valmont Power Plant are in! You can find Greenpeace Flickr Photos like this one from Colorado here, here, and here.

6:10 EST West Coast events such as the San Francisco Bicylce Tide Line and a Manhattan Beach rally are ongoing. Photos from farther east are pooring in! Check out thes photos Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, and NYC:

Created with flickr slideshow.

This is one of my favorite photos from the Boston Under Water Festival where a coalition of organizations and activists called attention to threat of rising sea levels do to global warming:

And at a rally earlier in Tampa:

 

October 23 4:52 PM EST - October 24th, the International Day of Climate Action poses to be the largest, most coordinated day of action for the environment in history. And it has already begun in New Zealand!

As part of a large global alliance of organizations coming together on Oct. 24th, Greenpeace is  calling on the world's leaders to agree to a climate deal that is ambitious, fair and binding. Together, we are pushing for a strong climate treaty that will not only reverse the march of dangerous climate change but also help us tackle some of the world’s largest challenges like deforestation.

TAKE ACTION:  Demand a global climate deal that is ambitious, fair and binding.

Participating in the day of action? Leave a comment to this blog and tell us what you are doing!

Today, President Obama gave an energy-themed speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His speech is just ahead of hearings on the climate and energy legislation scheduled to be taken up by the Senate next week.

Here's a statement by Damon Moglen, Greenpeace’s Global Warming Campaign Director:

“President Obama’s speech comes at a critical moment in the national conversation about how our country must respond to the global warming crisis, and we welcome his renewed engagement in this critical debate.

“However, with negotiations stalled just six weeks before international climate talks in Copenhagen, the world needs President Obama to go beyond political speeches and make firm commitments based on science.

“The climate and energy legislation passed in the House and now the similar Senate bill have been a source of international disappointment. The bills’ weak targets for reducing emissions, and billions in wasted giveaways to the coal industry, handicaps America’s ability to build a clean energy future at home and to provide global leadership on this life and death matter.

"It is clear that Congress will not pass legislation this year that goes far enough and fast enough in addressing the demands of climate change. The President must get out of the back seat and take the wheel of America’s climate policy. At a domestic level, the President needs to assert executive authority to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stimulate decisive growth in the clean energy economy.

"At the international level, Mr Obama should be articulating ambitious vision and commitments for Copenhagen which are in-scale with the global need to address climate change.

"Tomorrow, the most widespread day of global political action the planet has ever seen will demand that world leaders secure a fair, ambitious, and binding treaty at Copenhagen capable of preventing the worst impacts of global warming. We hope President Obama will be listening because today the American plan to address the crisis falls short of this imperative.”

On September 21, 2009 over 1 million people across the world were called to action after seeing the global premiere of ‘The Age of Stupid.’ Weeks later, hundreds of Greenpeace activists signed up to host their own showing of the film in their community or on their campus.

While the film has captured audiences of all ages and interests, young people and students have been overwhelmingly impacted and motivated by the honesty and urgency of the film’s message. During October 11th-23rd over sixty showings of ‘The Age of Stupid’ will take place on college and university campuses.  These film showing will bring attention to the most pressing issue of our generation: global warming. It is an opportunity to educate the student body on the global effects of the climate crisis, raise money for sustainable projects on campus and recruit new environmental leaders to get involved locally.

So far over 1,000 people have attended the campus film showings and there are still plenty more showings taking place this week.

Here are a few highlights from last week:

 At Michigan State University, over 150 people attended the showing hosted by MSU Greenpeace and the ECO club.  Afterward two MSU professors, one an ecological economist and the other an ecologist, facilitated a Q&A that verified the scientific content of the film and that now is the time to take action. The film had a huge impact on the audience and many were eager to find out how they can get involved in the fight against climate change.  Everyone was invited to attend the MSU event on October 24th, which will be taking place in front of the campus coal plant during a home football game.

Students at Northern Arizona University gathered before the film for a critical mass bike ride around Flagstaff. Everyone was decorated with signs encouraging people to ride bicycles and attend the film showing. After the bike ride, the cyclists joined the rest of the viewers on campus for an outdoor bike-in viewing of 'The Age of Stupid.' The event was complete with popcorn and cotton candy!The Campus Climate Challenge club hosted a fun and engaging event and recruited many people to attend their October 24th event where they will be participating in the Homecoming parade.

 Miami University of Ohio hosted an exciting film showing that brought together numerous campus and local organizations including Miami University Copenhagen Committee and Green Oxford. Everyone at the showing signed 'The Age of Stupid' banner and they will continue to collect signatures leading up to the UN Climate Change Conference in December. The film helped recruit new environmental leaders to get involved in the fight against the Miami University campus coal plant. Many of the students will be attending the Greenpeace October 24th event in Columbus.

At Rowan University, film viewers were motivated to take action immediately. Armed with "Stupid" and "Not Stupid" signs, students highlighted the environmentally friendly initiatives of their campus, such as bike racks, and the not-so-sustainable aspects, such as the large amount of waste produced.  

After numerous successful film showings and tons of students eager to take action, now it’s time to make history on October 24th for the International Day on Climate Action. Where will you be on October 24th? I know that Greenpeace students will be mobilizing on their campuses and calling on our world leaders for a fair, ambitious and binding treaty in Copenhagen this December.

 

When you close your eyes and picture a polar bear, what do you see? A couple years ago, when I closed my eyes, I saw a mama polar bear with two adorable baby cubs playing in the snow. But, now when I close my eyes I have the sad imagery of a desperate polar bear, thin, shaking and clinging to a small piece of ice, stranded in the middle of a cold arctic sea.

Polar bears are the unfortunate victim of our dependence on oil. When decisions are being made, big oil wins out and polar bears are left to die. They just can’t catch a real break. Their habitat is quickly disappearing – melting ice from global warming. And, if that’s not enough, the land that is still solid is being drilled and polluted for oil exploration.

Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to designate 200,000 square miles acres of coastal land and waters along the north coast of Alaska as critical habitat for polar bears. This proposal was in response to the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Greenpeace.

But, just as the polar bears were about to celebrate we remembered that this week another Interior Department agency, the Minerals Management Service, approved oil-company plans for exploratory drilling in the polar bear’s habitat in the Beaufort Sea. And, the Interior is considering a similar drilling proposal in the Chukchi Sea.

How can polar bears survive when the agency with the power to protect them is schizophrenic?  The Department of Interior (DOI) declared its intent to protect polar bear habitat in the Arctic, and simultaneously sacrificed that same habitat to feed our unsustainable addiction to oil.

Having a hard time keeping up? Here are some cliff notes...

• May 2008 the DOI listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

• At the same time, the DOI issued a special rule exempting greenhouse gas emissions from certain provisions of the Act.

• May 2009, new Interior Secretary Ken Salazar reaffirmed this Bush-era exemption for the fossil-fuels industry.

• A court challenge to this regulation by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Greenpeace is ongoing.

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Interior has until June 30, 2010 to finalize critical habitat designation for the polar bear. Designating polar bear critical habitat is a good first step toward protecting this species, but as long as the Secretary of the Interior maintains that he can do nothing about greenhouse emissions and global warming, protections for the polar bear will ultimately be ineffective.

 

 

I gave my Macbook a hug last night after reading on Apple's website that it has cleared the last hurdle in eliminating toxic PVC plastic. Apple is now the first PC maker to completely eliminate hazardous brominated flame retardants and polyvinyl chloride plastic in its new iMac and Macbook.

Removing PVC from PC power cords was the last step in Apple’s industry leading position on toxics elimination. Apple was first with PCs virtually free of BFRs and PVC (except for the power cord) in March this year. While HP recently produced their first BFR/PVC free (except power cord) model, Apple has again moved further ahead of the competition.

While removing the last use of PVC might not sound like a big deal, it means Apple’s new products will be safer and easier to recycle and cause less pollution at the end of life. There were significant technical and safety certification barriers to finding PVC alternatives, but Apple has now proved it's now possible and has completed the phase out, while reducing product price and boosting profits.

Apple’s PVC free power cords are only available in certain markets currently but should be available more widely when safety certification is obtained.

This lays down the gauntlet to other major PC makers such as Dell, HP, Lenovo and Acer to catch up with Apple again, and we’ll be keeping up our pressure on them to match Apple’s lead.

A bit of history

Back in 2006 we launched our Green my Apple campaign because we knew Apple had the potential to lead the industry towards greener, less toxic products. Huge numbers of Apple fans also called for a Greener Apple and the new iMac and MacBook are the final steps on the road Apple started down with Steve Jobs May 2007. This news marks an active few weeks for Apple’s environment team. Apple deserves credit for these positive moves but also big credit to all those Apple fans who helped make environment a top priority for Apple.

On October 21st, the House Energy and Commerce Committee chaired by Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Subcommittee Chair Edward Markey (D-MA) approved comprehensive chemical plant security legislation (H.R. 2868 & H.R. 3258) in a 29-18 vote. The Committee rejected all 15 Republican amendments designed to cripple or delay both bills. The legislation is expected to go to the House floor later this fall. This is the first time this legislation has been approved by the two authorizing committees. On June 23rd the Homeland Security Committee also approved a weaker version of H.R. 2868.

“A compromise acceptable to leading industry lobbyists wasn’t enough for Committee  republicans. If they had had their way, chemical plants that pose catastrophic risks to densely populated areas would continue to put millions at risk for years to come,” said Rick Hind, Legislative Director of Greenpeace. In fact, the American Chemistry Council, in a letter to Chairman Waxman just before the committee markup, proclaimed HR 2868 "the appropriate vehicle for ensuring a permanant CFATS program."

More than 200 chemical facilities have converted to safer chemical processes since 9/11  eliminating poison gas risks to 38 million Americans. Hundreds of other plants together put more than 100 million Americans at risk. A blue-green coalition of more than 50 organizations has been urging Congress to enact legislation to eliminate these risks. They include: the  United Auto Workers, Steelworkers, Teamsters, Fire Fighters, Sierra Club, Physicians for Social Responsibility, U.S. Public Interest Research Group and Greenpeace. The Department of Homeland Security and the EPA testified in favor of this legislation at an October 1st hearing held by the Subcommittee.

*The final version of the Energy and Commerce Committee bills (H.R. 2868 & H.R. 3258) would:

• Conditionally require the highest risk plants to use safer cost-effective chemical processes where feasible and require the remaining high risk plants to “assess” safer processes;
• Eliminate the current law's exemption of thousands of chemical plants, such as waste water and drinking water facilities;
• Involve plant employees in the development of security plans and provide protections for whistleblowers;
• Preserve state’s authority to establish stronger security standards, and
• Provide up to $225 (H.R. 2868) and $375 (H.R. 3258) million respectively toward the implementation of safer chemical processes over a three-year period.*

 “Although this bill is a compromise, it is a giant step forward for communities at risk. We look forward to working with the House leadership in moving this bill to the House floor this fall,” said Hind.

Among the compromises, the legislation narrows the number of high-risk chemical facilities to approximately 107 that may be required to eliminate catastrophic risks with safer chemical processes. It also allows chemical plants a second appeals process to challenge agency decisions and exempts them from citizen enforcement suits. Instead, the bill contains a petition process giving citizens the right to initiate a government investigation into potential violations by a chemical facility. The legislation also does not ensure that residents living downwind of high-risk chemical plants will be informed if nearby facilities are in compliance with security regulations or even part of the program.

In June, the House Homeland Security Committee approved a different version of H.R. 2868, which included four major loopholes not contained in the Energy and Commerce bills.

--Mae

Our tour is wrapping up. We steamed into port here in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, on the 19th. We spent the last few days of the tour in high seas pocket number 3 (see a map of the high seas pockets here), looking for fishing vessels that are threatening the future of the Pacific. And let me tell you, we had absolutely no problems finding them.

On Thursday, the 15th, we found a Taiwanese long-liner, Kai Jie No. 1, that had no license to fish in the waters of any Pacific island countries. This does not make it illegal for them to be fishing on the high seas, since these waters belong to no particular nation, but this is one of the main ways fishing fleets get around the regulations that Pacific island countries are introducing to better manage their tuna stocks.

We spoke with the captain of the vessel and explained that what he was doing was decimating the tuna stocks that Pacific island nations rely on and asked him to pull in his line. When he refused, we took action. We went out and, using a special contraption designed by our fitter from the first leg of the tour, Jono, to hold the line up out of the water, we went down the long-line and removed the bait from their hooks.

I shot this video of the action, in which our resident marine life expert, Gabe, explains more about the process:


This ship may not have been a pirate fisher in a legal sense — though it was operating in an area known to host a lot of the region’s illegal fishing — but it was certainly plundering the Pacific. That’s why we’re trying to shut down the four high seas pockets to all fishing.

The next day we spotted yet another unlicensed Taiwanese long-liner fishing on the high seas. It might seem unlikely for us to come across one vessel after another in an ocean as vast as the Pacific, but when you consider that these ships are part of a massive fleet of more than 1,300 long-liners — and that’s just the Taiwanese fleet — you begin to realize how big the problem is and why we keep encountering them.

Again, we went and spoke with the captain, passed him information about our campaign and the science showing that Pacific tuna stocks are in bad shape, and asked him to stop plundering the Pacific. He also refused to haul in his line, as you’ll hear our translator Tan-chi tell us in this video:



As you could see, the captain of this ship was quite an agreeable guy who seemed genuinely interested in what we had to say. He sat and read our campaign materials for several minutes. He was even very hospitable towards us: when we refused the grape sodas he offered after reading our literature, he insisted we take them so vehemently that he actually threw them onboard our boats. We are not trying to set ourselves up in opposition to this hard-working captain and his crew.

As Tan-chi translated for us, the economics of the situation make it impossible for him to stop fishing and head back to port. And that’s what we are trying to change. You can read more about this situation — the vicious cycle of fishing in the Pacific and the diminishing returns these vessels are producing as Pacific fish stocks grow more and more depleted — in this blog by Karli, our onboard campaigner.

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

On October 14th, the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment chaired by Representative Edward Markey (D-MA) approved comprehensive chemical plant security legislation (H.R. 2868 & H.R. 3258) in an 18 to10 party-line vote. The Subcommittee rejected 13 Republicans amendments aimed at crippling the legislation that will be taken up by the full Energy and Commerce Committee this week. This is the first time this legislation has moved through the Homeland Security Committee.  

“Given a choice between protecting millions of Americans at risk and doing nothing, Subcommittee Republicans not only chose nothing, they proposed doing nothing for three more years,” said Rick Hind, Legislative Director of Greenpeace.  “The compromises contained in each bill weren’t enough for subcommittee Republicans. They also tried to gut provisions in both bills that would eliminate catastrophic risks in densely populated areas,” said Hind.

The compromise legislation narrows the number of high-risk chemical facilities to approximately 107 that are required to eliminate catastrophic risks with safer chemical processes. It also allows chemical plants a second appeals process to challenge agency decisions and exempts them from direct citizen enforcement.  Instead, the bill contains a petition process affording citizens the ability to initiate a government investigation into potential violations by a chemical facility.  The compromise legislation also does not ensure that residents living downwind of high-risk chemical plants will be informed if nearby facilities are subject to or in compliance with security regulations.

 “This bill clearly represents a compromise on some major issues. We look forward to working with the Energy and Commerce Committee this week to improve the bill further,” said Hind.

More than 200 chemical facilities have converted to safer chemical processes since 9/11 eliminating poison gas risks to 38 million Americans. Hundreds of other chemical plants together put more than 100 million Americans at risk. A blue-green coalition of more than 50 organizations have been urging Congress to enact legislation to eliminate these risks. They include: the United Auto Workers, Steelworkers, Teamsters, Fire Fighters, Sierra Club, Physicians for Social Responsibility, U.S. Public Interest Research Group and Greenpeace. The Department of Homeland Security and the EPA testified in favor of this legislation at an October 1st hearing held by the Subcommittee.

In June, the House Homeland Security Committee approved a different version of H.R. 2868, which included four major loopholes not contained in the Energy & Commerce bills.

The Energy & Environment Subcommittee version of H.R. 2868 and H.R. 3258 would also:
- Eliminate the current law's exemption of thousands of chemical plants, such as waste water and drinking water facilities;
- Involve plant employees in the development of security plans and provides protections for whistleblowers;
- Preserve state’s authority to establish stronger security standards, and
- provide up to $225 (H.R. 2868) and $375 (H.R. 3258) million respectively toward the implementation of safer chemical processes over a three-year period.

Earlier this week, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere as well as NOAA Admisistrator – not to mention a member of President Obama’s Ocean Taskforce – finally broke the silence by officially weighing in on bluefin tuna.

Lubchenco announced that the United States is “sending a clear and definitive statement to the international community that the status quo is not acceptable.”  She formally acknowledged the peril facing the Northern bluefin tuna, citing stock declines of 72% and 82% in the eastern and western populations, respectively.  The good Doctor levels blame for these declines directly at the ineffectual International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), as well as the irresponsible activities of certain countries that target bluefin in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Lubchenco calls for ICCAT to address overfishing by setting responsible quotas, increasing enforcement, and instituting fishing closures during spawning periods.   She then goes on to declare the United States’ “strong support” for Monaco’s proposal to prohibit the international trade of the species by way of a CITES Appendix I listing.

Sounds great, right?  And it is, in a way.  It’s a strong proclamation that lets the world know the United States is seriously concerned about this issue.   So why aren’t I out in the street right now, lighting fireworks and drinking to excess?

What’s more important than what Dr. Lubchenco said is what she didn’t say.  Specifically, one particular word, the absence of which leaves me worried and somewhat dismayed.

That word is “sponsor.”

Lubchenco’s statement, while full of authority and righteous indignation, undercuts itself by failing to take up Monaco’s proposal whole-heartedly and champion it at the upcoming CITES meeting in March.  Here’s what I mean:

Sponsoring the proposal would have meant that the United States would have submitted Monaco’s resolution to the CITES parties itself.

Strongly supporting the proposal means that the United States is behind the idea in theory, but won’t stand alone to bring it to the table for due consideration and a vote.

The United States’ government has cast its weight behind a plan that would theoretically repair ICCAT rather than seek endangered species status for the bluefin.  And yes, there is some merit to this.  If ICCAT had the capacity to set quotas based on ecologically sustainable yield (ESY) as well as the teeth to enforce them in the face of pirates and greedy European bureaucrats – then it just might work.  In fact, by demonstrating its capacity to rebuild the tuna stock in the face of unrelenting market pressure, it could even prove a model for other fishery management tools.  But based on ICCAT’s shameful history, not to mention the infuriating myopia and relentless rapacity demonstrated by some of the countries participating in ICCAT, I am forced to remain skeptical.

While Lubchenco’s statement rings loudly, its effectiveness is yet to be determined.  The gap between sponsorship and strong support is wide indeed – potentially wide enough to swallow up all that’s left of the once-mighty bluefin tuna.

Being that I’m in the middle of the Pacific on an Oceans campaign, I thought it would be appropriate if I celebrated Blog Action Day ’09 with a post about the effects global warming is having on the world’s oceans.

I wrote yesterday about the obligation of the developed world to help developing nations deal with the impacts of climate change on the oceans, but I didn’t really specify what those impacts might be. Here are a few of the major impacts we can expect if global warming is not put in check:

• Coral bleaching
The world’s coral reefs are some of the most amazing and diverse ecosystems on the planet, but they’re in grave danger from global warming. Corals contain microscopic algae that provide the coral with food and give them their vibrant colors. Rising ocean temperatures cause corals to expel these algae, thus turning them white or "bleaching" them. Worse, the corals die if the algae don’t return.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef, experienced its worst ever case of coral bleaching in 2002, when over 60 percent of the reef was affected. Unless projected levels of climate change are slowed, much of the reef will be dead in decades. Worse, hundreds of species relying on the reef will also die out along with their living home.

Corals the world over are facing the threat of bleaching, from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean to the Galapagos Islands and the Philipines.

•Global melting
As global temperatures rise, the world’s ice melts. It’s as simple as that. And we’re already witnessing this happening. Our recent Arctic Impacts expedition was all about documenting the meltdown of Greenland’s glaciers and trying to understand the mechanisms behind it.



The melting of the world’s sea ice and glaciers will have a number of implications, perhaps the most discussed being that as Arctic sea ice melts there will be less habitat for polar bears, further imperiling this already endangered species. But global melting will also contribute to sea level rise and change the salinity of the oceans, hurting fish stocks and disrupting ocean circulation patterns.

Most worrisome is the fact that as the ice melts, more land and ocean water is exposed. The white ice reflects the sun’s light, but the darker water and land absorbs it, thereby potentially creating a negative feedback loop in which the melting of the world’s ice and the heating of our planet is accelerated. Already the Arctic is melting much faster than anyone predicted.

•Sea level rise
Melting sea ice does not contribute to sea level rise because that ice is already floating, but melting glaciers most certainly will cause the world’s seas to rise. A very sobering report was released earlier this month by the United Nations Environmental Program that forecasted a 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit rise in global temperatures by the end of the century. This would mean as much as a six-foot rise in sea levels.

Even a sea level rise of just around three feet, meanwhile, is projected to displace millions of people who live in low-lying parts of the world. In fact, the president of the Maldives, a Pacific island nation that is only 4.9 feet above sea level on average, recently held a cabinet meeting underwater to highlight the threat that the looming climate crisis and sea level rise pose to his country.

You can check out this Google Map to see what various degrees of sea level rise might look like.

•Threats to marine life
Coral and Polar bears aren’t the only species threatened by global warming. Rises in ocean temperatures will impact the entire web of marine life. For example, phytoplankton, which is the main food source of small crustaceans like krill, grow under sea ice. A reduction in sea ice implies a reduction in krill — and krill feeds many whale species, including the great whales.

Whole species of marine animals and fish are directly at risk. A recent study found that warmer waters, for instance, can lead to some species becoming more aggressive and more vulnerable to prey.

Ocean acidification is another problem threatening marine life. As more CO2 is pumped into our atmosphere, more CO2 is absorbed by the oceans, which decreases the pH level of the oceans. Unfortunately, ocean acidification is happening much faster than anyone predicted, making life harder and harder on organisms like molluscs that depend on calcium carbonate shells, which can be weakened or even dissolved by acid.

These are just some of the main impacts I wanted to talk about, but by no means all of them. I barely touched on what a change in ocean currents due to decreased salinity might mean to weather patterns, for instance. And speaking of weather patterns, you’re probably already aware that warmer ocean temperatures are widely considered to make tropical storms bigger and more frequent. There’s even some compelling evidence that climate change is causing the El Niño phenomenon to be more frequent and more persistent.

All of this, I think, makes it abundantly clear that we need to put pressure on President Obama and other world leaders to sign an ambitious climate treaty in Copenhagen this December.

For more than two decades, Daniel Beltrá has been saving the world, one photo at a time. Now, the world is recognizing him for the astonishing work he has produced for Greenpeace and for the work he has produced as the winner of a 2008 World Photography Award special category sponsored by Sony for the Prince's Rainforest Project.

On Friday, Oct. 16, 2009, Beltrá will be named "Person of the Week" on ABC's " World News with Charles Gibson, at 6.30 Eastern Time, and 5.30 Pacific. The scheduled program will showcase his year-long tropical rainforest project, broadcast an interview with Beltrá, and display images from an exhibition at the Mercy Corps Action Center which runs through Nov. 15th at 6 River Terrace, Battery Park City, New York, NY.

The segment will also feature footage of Beltrá at work in Sumatra where he was shocked to find that more than 80 percent of the original forests have been destroyed and replaced by monocultures of palm oil, acacia, and eucalyptus.

I'll be watching the footage of this master environmental photographer at work hoping to pick up any clues to his technique and to try and figure out how he is able to keep looking through the lens and making equally incredible images of the beauty of the natural world and the full horror of its ongoing destruction. I hope you will tune in whether you have appreciated his past work or are just discovering something new.  

Through Beltrá's lens we see the majestic grandeur of polar ice formations and the plight of polar bears leaping between melting ice pods in their disappearing habitat. Through him, we look down into depths of the Amazon forest and see the variety of plant and animal life and we see it disappear in a plume of dark smoke blotting out the wide horizon as it billows from the blackened earth under broken trees. Through his images, Beltrá takes us to the far reaches of the world bearing witness to what is happening to Mother Earth. He wields his camera to pierce the smoke and shatter the mirrors with which governments and corporations attempt to hide the awful truth of their plunder.

Is the Climate Bill morphing into an excuse to promote fossil fuels and new nuclear power plants? 

Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) recent promotion of a pro-nuke/pro-drilling/pro-coal agenda in the name of Climate Protection has been highlighted in a New York Times op-ed co-authored with Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC). The piece brands nuke power "our single largest contributor of emissions-free power." It advocates abolishing "cumbersome regulations" so utilities can "secure financing for more plants." And it wants "serious investment" to "find solutions to our nuclear waste problem." 

The Senate Bill as now drafted also includes a "Clean Energy Development Administration" that could deliver virtually unlimited federal cash to build new reactors and fund other mega-polluters. 

Also on the table are vastly expanded permits for off-shore drilling. And Kerry/Graham have talked of making the US "the Saudi Arabia of clean coal" while bringing "new financial incentives for companies that develop carbon capture and sequestration technology." 

If you think pushing nukes, oil wells and coal mines to "prevent global warming" is counter-intuitive, you ain't seen nothin' yet. 

The give-aways are allegedly meant to attract GOP votes. The joint Kerry/Graham op-ed is being billed as a "game changer." 

But even with provisions pushing a hundred new reactors in the US alone, some GOP stalwarts hint they would NEVER vote for a bill that includes cap-and-trade clauses. So is the GOP set to play the same game with Climate legislation as it has with health care: prolong negotiations, gut the substance of reform, demand---and GET---untold corporate give-aways, and then oppose the bill anyway? 

What thin green substance survives could be limited to a few showpiece handouts for renewables and efficiency, with cap-and-trade as the centerpiece. But many environmentalists argue that cap-and-trade could create yet another costly bureaucracy with little real impact on the climate crisis. 

To get real about solving this crisis, Congress should demand---and fund---a definitive national transition to energy efficiency and modernized mass transit. We still waste half the energy we consume. There's no source of usable juice cheaper and quicker to install than increased efficiency. 

Taxes on carbon and other forms of "ancillary" pollution would help if they assess radioactive emissions (from coal as well as nukes), destruction of our oceans, lakes and rivers, removal of mountain tops, creation of nuclear waste, and so on. Merely axing the subsidies to King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas) and rendering a level playing field for true green energy sources to fairly compete with the old fossil/nukes would take us a long way up the road to Solartopia. A feed-in tariff that rewards renewables for the pollution they avoid would also help. 

Without all that, the Climate Bill's outright negatives could be huge. Atomic reactors can do little or nothing to bring down carbon emissions. Projected construction costs for new nukes have jumped from $2 billion to $13 billion and counting. Body-blows to the all-but-dead Yucca Mountain nuke waste dump have left the industry, after 50 years, with nothing tangible to do with some 50,000 tons of spent lethal radioactive fuel rods. And after a half-century, the industry cannot command private construction financing or private liability insurance to cover a catastrophic melt-down or terror attack. Even if reactors could help with greenhouse gas emissions, it would take a trillion dollars or more to make a noticeable dent, and a decade or more for such reactors to begin to come on line. 

But the reactor lifeline does not flow through licensing or waste. Because it has failed as a commercial technology, the industry must have massive infusions of cash and loan guarantees. The Climate Bill's real damage will be measured by the size and scope of reactor subsidies, if any. 

Kerry's willingness to entertain "clean coal" and new offshore oil drilling as "solutions" for climate chaos staggers the imagination. It seems to signal that King CONG still owns Washington, and that any meaningful Congressional push for green power will demand serious re-direction from the grassroots. 

DC insiders generally doubt that any Climate Bill can pass this year. Afghanistan and health care still dominate the national agenda. 

But Democrats are desperate for SOMETHING to show at December's Copenhagen Climate Conference. The question is: how much will they give fossil/nuke Republicans to get a bill---ANY bill---with the world "Climate" attached? 

The anti-nuclear movement has three times defeated proposed $50 billion loan guarantees for new nuclear plants. The environmental community still understands that solving the climate crisis requires the ultimate phase-out of fossil fuels. “A carbon-free, nuclear-free energy future is within the Senate’s reach," says Michael Mariotte of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service. "The approach laid out by Kerry and Graham would lead to a climate bill in name only." NIRS is organizing a national call-in this week. A nationwide series of demonstrations for the environment will take place October 24. 

Preserving our ability to survive on this planet demands we phase out fossil fuels and nuclear power, and win a green-powered Earth based solely on renewables and efficiency. Ultimately, we cannot live with less.

--
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and senior editor of www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.

Thursday, dozens of activists gathered outside the Democratic fundraiser in San Francisco. Activists hoped to get a glimpse of President Obama as he approached the fundraiser to speak to his party.

 

 

San Francisco has long been a city that’s given President Obama strong support-- in part, this support hinged on his promise to lead on global warming. Unfortunately, Obama has so far allowed industry lobbyists to drive US climate policy, in spite of the billions of people whose lives are touched by climate change. Like many regions of the world experiencing the early effects of global warming, California has suffered from record wildfires and water shortages.

To make sure he'd get the message that more is required, activists stood on the street corner and used music players to broadcast samples of Obama’s statements committing to leadership in addressing climate change. The audio also included a challenge from activists to live up to his promises to lead the world toward a solution to the crisis.

Activists had a very simple message of the President, “please be the leader you vowed to be.”

President Obama needs to go to Copenhagen and push for a strong world treaty that does what science says will protect future generations. So far, he's let Congress take the lead, but they have fallen dramatically short of what science says is necessary. The world desperately needs the president to be the leader he promised he would be.

Take action

It's finally here, a day when over 7,400 blogs with over 11,000,000 million readers will all be blogging about one thing on one day: climate. It couldn't come at a better moment, it is only 9 day before Greenpeace, 350.org and a host of coaltion partners and grassroots activists are calling for a Global Day of Action for the Climate!

What is today? It's Blog Action Day 2009, "an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be the largest-ever social change event on the web." This year, the organizers of blog action day chose climate as their issue and I couldn't explain why this is such an important move better myself:

Climate change affects us all and it threatens more than the environment. It threatens to cause famine, flooding, war, and millions of refugees.

Given the urgency of the issue of climate change and the upcoming international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December, we think the blogosphere has the unique opportunity to mobilize millions of people around expressing support for finding a sustainable solution to the climate crisis.

 Blog Action Day is perfectly timed to mobilize folks all over the world to participate in the October 24th International Day of Climate Action, when thousands of people just like you will Gather in more than 150 countries worldwide with the same message to world leaders: stop playing politics and save the planet.

And while we write about climate almost everyday, if you're a blogger, here are two things you can do to pitch in on Blog Action Day:

1. Write about the one of more than 2,400 events around the world happening closest to you.

2. Call your readers to action by posting this video:

Then, from the internet and in the streets, we can take this planet back!

When we caught the Japanese ship Koyu Maru 3 illegally fishing in Cook Islands waters, I made the point that their actions were not just illegal but immoral. I thought I'd write a little bit more on that, as well as the moral obligations of the developed world to deal with issues like overfishing and climate change — issues that developed nations are overwhelmingly responsible for creating.


September 02, 2009 - Activists from the Esperanza display banners alongside a Taiwanese fishing vessel that was illegally transferring fish to another vessel in the Western Pacific Ocean. The transfer of fish at sea is one of the methods used around the world to cover up illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU or pirate) fishing activities. © Greenpeace/Paul Hilton

Last week, The Commonwealth released a report written by 26 scientists and academics that underscores the drastic need for government action on overfishing and climate change in order to stave off a collapse of global fisheries. The report warns that the oceans could soon become as barren as deserts and goes on to say:

The study reveals that those least responsible for the state of the oceans are most likely to suffer the consequences of poor management and climate change. Small island states in particular are vulnerable to illegal and unfair fishing by foreign fleets and to migration of fish away from warming seas.

The Esperanza has been in the Pacific region since May to support Pacific Island countries on issues ranging from climate change to fisheries collapse and marine conservation (read more here and here).

But of course Greenpeace’s history in the Pacific Ocean goes back much further than that — all the way back to the early 1970s when we were protesting the French nuclear blasts at Moruroa. The fallout from these blasts also disproportionately affected those Pacific islanders living downwind from the blast sites — another instance of those not responsible for a problem suffering the most. While there was nothing technically illegal about these blasts, the total disregard for human health and welfare only highlights how egregiously immoral they were.

The industrialized commercial fishing vessels that are literally stealing fish from Pacific island nations' waters is just another example of the developed world doing as they please and disregarding the well-being of the people affected by their actions. That's why it’s very encouraging that eight Pacific island nations have come together and are standing up for their rights against the invading international commercial fishing fleets.

Pacific island states are not the only developing nations that are banding together to force the developed world to live up to their moral obligations: “Africa will demand billions of dollars in compensation from rich polluting nations at a UN climate summit for the harm caused by global warming on the continent, African officials said Sunday.”

Lest we doubt that there is any need for this stand by African nations, even the World Bank, which has not historically been known as a good friend to the developing world (Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine documents ample evidence of this assertion), is warning of the threats those nations are facing as the climate crisis looms: “The World Bank estimates that the developing world will suffer about 80 percent of the damage of climate change despite accounting for only around one third of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

So the real question we must be asking ourselves is: Will the developed world stand up and do the right thing in regard to these moral obligations?

Greenpeace released the “America’s Share of the Climate Crisis: A State-By-State Carbon Footprint” report back in May to highlight the United States’ responsibility for leading the world's efforts to stop global warming given our outsized role in creating the problem.

Sign our petition to President Obama letting him know that Americans expect world leaders to agree to a climate deal that is ambitious, fair and binding this December in Copenhagen.

René Ngongo has been working closely with Greenpeace to save the Congo Basin Forests (the second largest tropical forest after the Amazon) since 2004. And, he is now being recognized for his good work.

René began his work for the Amazon first in his capacity as head of OCEAN and now as Political Advisor for Greenpeace Africa when he led the opening of our first office in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The Right Livelihood Award is also known as the alternative Nobel Prize. It honors those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today. Several winners are announced every year and receive the prize in early December. We are beyond happy that René is one of them.

Congratulations René!!

 

Global warming is the challenge of our generation. And, while the issue may be daunting, it is inspiring to know that people everywhere are taking action to save the climate.

Our future depends on an ambitious global climate deal. Are you up for the challenge?

Live in the Washington DC area? Want to do something fun and show your green?  Greenpeace will be at this year’s Green Festival at the Convention Center in Washington DC Saturday from 10am-7pm and Sunday 11am-6pm.  Come over and say hello to our friendly volunteers who will be spreading the word about the UN Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen and what folks can do to get our leaders to engage in a fair, ambitious, and binding international treaty to curb global green house gas emissions and prevent the worst of climate change impacts. There will be information about many Greenpeace campaigns, so come to booth 122 with questions, concerns, or even a high five. If you can’t make the festival this weekend, you can sign on to our petition now, or find out about the International Day of Climate Action event in your area.

At Green Festival you can sample organic foods, listen to new music, learn about green innovations, see an environmental movie, listen to speakers like Ed Begley, Jr., Amy Goodman, and just announced, Ralph Nader.  Find out more at the Green Festival website.   Hope to seeyou there!

 

 

 

 

I'm always amazed at all the beautiful pictures Greenpeace captures. I wanted to share a slideshow of images from around the globe. Greenpeace is an international organization with offices in more than 30 countries. Take a visual tour with me and discover some amazing actions from around the world.

 

Hope you enjoy the pictures

-Michelle 

Just the other day, I was having a discussion with Karli, one of our onboard Oceans campaigners, about the origin of the phrase “caught red-handed.” One website I found said that it came about as a reference to literally being caught with blood on your hands after the commission of a murder or a poaching session.
 
Whether or not that’s the true origin of the phrase, it makes an apt introduction to what we witnessed yesterday. We literally caught the Japanese ship Koyu Maru 3 red-handed, hauling in its long-line and catching tuna within Cook Islands waters, where the ship does not have a license to fish.


The Koyu Maru 3 in Cook Islands waters. Image © Paul Hilton/Greenpace

We provided the Cook Islands Ministry of Marine Resources and the Fisheries Agency of Japan with photographic evidence of the illegal activity, which you can see here, and are now calling for the arrest of the ship’s captain.


The crew of the Koyu Maru 3 hauling in their long-line. Image © Paul Hilton/Greenpace


The crew of the Koyu Maru hauling a tuna onto their ship. Image © Paul Hilton/Greenpace

Greenpeace is also demanding that the Japanese government order Koyu Maru 3, which is owned by Tokyo-based World Tuna Co Ltd., to stop its illegal fishing activities and sail to the nearest port for further investigation.

This is more than an issue of what’s legal and illegal. The Koyu Maru 3 and other pirate fishing vessels are stealing fish from these waters and using it for their own profit, depriving the people of the Cook Islands of a vital source of income. Josh, another Oceans campaigner onboard who is from the region, put it well when he said, “These pirates of the Pacific must be stopped from plundering ocean life and robbing local communities.”

With that in mind, we decided that documenting the plundering of their seas and providing that evidence to Cook Islands officials, and thereby helping empower them to police their own waters, would be more effective than taking action against the vessel ourselves.

Globally, more than $9 billion dollars is lost each year to pirate fishing fleets, who reap their profits in European, American and Asian markets while threatening Pacific fish stocks and depriving coastal communities of much-needed income. A recent report estimated that pirate fishing in the Pacific accounts for an average of 36% of the fish caught there, much higher than the global average of 19%.

Long-liners like the Koyu Maru 3 mainly target bigeye, yellowfin and albacore tuna, as these species fetch top dollar in sashimi markets in Japan and other countries where this delicacy has become popular. Scientists have warned, however, that some Pacific tuna stocks, particularly bigeye and yellowfin tuna, are being fished beyond their limits. Pirate fishing further threatens the stocks and undermines conservation and management attempts in the region. That’s why it’s important that local Pacific islands governments have the resources they need to protect their waters.

As I sat on the bridge one day doing my regular watch duty, I pulled out my trusty digital camcorder and shot this quick pan across the bridge windows. This is pretty much what I spend two hours a day doing — staring out at the open sea, looking for other vessels, FADs, long-line beacons, whales, dolphins, or anything else there might be to see.
Sadly, I have never seen anything of much interest on any of my watches (aside from the occasional flying fish or seabird, that is). But one morning I did see some sperm whales spouting way in the distance — our wake-up call went something like this: "Good morning! It's 7:30, and there are whales off the bow!"

I didn't get to go out there and swim with the whales, but our photographer did:




Images © Paul Hilton/Greenpeace

This exclusive interview was conducted by Greenpeace correspondant Ashley Mirabile, and is cross-posted from the Greenpeace community blog.

The popular grocery store, Trader Joe's, known for stocking its shelves full of affordable products with natural and organic ingredients, has dodged many attempts by Greenpeace USA to discuss its less than satisfactory seafood buying policy. Despite the company's commendable evasive techniques, they have failed to silence deranged spokesman/ deviant pirate, Traitor Joe, who leaked some truly embarrassing seafood secrets in an exclusive interview with an official Greenpeace volunteer this week.

Traitor Joe, who has lately been rumored to frequent The Reef in order to feed his growing addiction to karaoke and the age-old pirate tradition of gluttonous drinking, was discovered mid-musical number on stage in a state of discombobulation Monday evening. The intoxicated pirate, whose already encumbered sight due to the necessity of an eye patch appeared to be blurred, spilled a flask of rum down a ragged t-shirt bearing the Trader Joe's insignia. His speech was slurred and his voice was hoarse from the repetition of his favored melodic verse:

 

"Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me.
We're shady, deceitful, so we can make loot,
Eat up me 'earties, yo ho.
We peddle red-list fish, and don't give a hoot,
Eat up me 'earties, yo ho."

When he stepped down from the stage and sat back down at his regular stool at the bar, Traitor Joe appeared to be loose-lipped with the unconcerned bartender about certain red-list fish species that have made it to the frozen aisles in various Trader Joe's locations.

There are 22 species included in the Greenpeace Seafood Red List and according to Greenpeace, "they have a very high risk of being sourced from unsustainable fisheries or unsustainable aquaculture operations."

Greenpeace surveys have found that Trader Joe's sells 15 of these red-list seafoods including orange roughy, Alaska pollock, and Greenland halibut.

Joe, in his state of inebriation, fortunately failed to recognize his interested bar companion to be a member of Greenpeace and so did not bother to relent in his speech when approached by aforementioned environmental activist.

"Arghhh, Matey. My favorite snack is Trader Joe's lightly breaded fish sticks," Joe said. "They've got a secret ingredient in them that makes me think them a tasty treat. It's Alaskan pollock!" 

For the last five years, survival of juvenile pollock has been recorded as below average in the Gulf of Alaska, Aleutian Chain and Bogoslof area due to overfishing. Pollock fisheries may also be responsible for the rapid population decline of endangered Steller sea lions and northern fur seals.

"But you'd never know that the ingredients in me favorite Trader Joe's products were unsustainable 'cause of our ambiguous packaging," Joe said.

Trader Joe typically labels its products to help consumers purchase vegan, gluten-free or other diet-specific foods, but the labels on their seafood products inadequately advise customers who would otherwise commit to sustainable shopping.

 

Joe, smacking his lips in delicious delight, continued to list various other seemingly innocent Trader Joe products such as the "Wild Sashimi Grade Ahi" which contains longline-caught yellowfin tuna, and "Trader Joe's Seasoned Turbot" which is actually the bycatch-heavy Greenland halibut. Both of these are red-list species.

"I just wish all 'em darn activists would stop sending those bloody Singing Billie the Chilean sea bass telegrams," Joe said. "They be gettin' on me last nerve!"

Traitor Joe then abandoned the conversation and approached the stage once again to commence in singing his own rendition of "Row Row Row Your Boat."

The interview, however brief, gave insight into Trader Joe's unsustainable seafood buying policy and should encourage Trader Joe customers to continue to put pressure on the popular grocery store.

The debate over toilet paper softness is not going anywhere soon, not in the blogs, not in the media, and certainly not in my parents' house.

I will admit I was a loyal Angel Soft user for years, from high school when I would ask Mom to "buy the TP with the baby on the front" (how is that for brand imaging?) to college when I would throw it in my own cart at the grocery store.  I do not know what it was about that toilet paper that made me love it so, but I was one sure hooked consumer.

In college there was no Kleercut campaign on my campus.  We all happily used our Kleenex, 3-ply toilet paper, and Bounty paper towels like there was an endless supply of one roll after another.  All that changed though when I learned I was wiping up party spills with virgin wood fiber.  With the aid of the Tissue Guide I switched brands.  Yes, when my roommate and I ran out of TP one day this past spring I stopped in the paper products aisle and stared, stared at the baby and back again at the recycled toilet paper.  I had never paused before, had never considered buying another brand, but I did it.  I slid the package of recycled toilet paper under my cart and went about my grocery shopping.

When my roommate did not say anything about the new toilet paper in the bathroom I figured she had not noticed.  Not like I was trying to hide the package and trick her into thinking it was the cushy 3-ply we had been using, but a whole week went by without comment.  What was going on here?  Was the girl that had bought only Charmin really using recycled tp without a fuss?  Turns out, she was.  We went through roll after roll and when it came time to buy tp again I bought recycled.  I finally had to ask, "How do you feel about the recycled toilet paper we have been using?"  Her response, "Umm.. I don't know if I knew it was recycled."  She had even kept a roll bedside during a particularly nasty cold, how is that for an argument against all those tissues with lotion for red, scratchy noses!

Mom, on the other hand, is still a change in progress.  Before my younger sister left for college Mom bought a pack of recycled tp for the house but she promptly replaced it with that baby on the front tp.  Does she know what that baby stands for?? 

This past weekend, I was home enjoying an afternoon with my parents when a stray paper towel blew across the backyard.  As Dad chased it down, Mom joked, "In 20 years it'll break down!"  I stood up, walked to the paper towel holder, and said, "You know, you could at least use recycled paper towels, I don't think the countertops will complain." 

Take this time to thank Kimberly-Clark for their commitments to protect the Boreal Forest, and please sign those petitions we mailed to you demanding sustainable practices from Proctor&Gamble!  Shop with the tissue guide and introduce those in your life to recycled paper products.  I promise you, if my twenty-something year old friends can make the switch you can too!  In the meantime I will keep working on Mom to get those paper towels changed out..

Before we left Vanuatu for the second leg of the current tour, our onboard videographer did a quick dive test to check his underwater camera. He swam under the Esperanza and filmed the whole thing. I thought the footage was pretty amazing and definitely worth sharing with you all. But to make it even more interesting, I asked the Esperanza's chief engineer, Freddy, to narrate what we were seeing. Check out the video and a note from Freddy, who has been working on Greenpeace ships for quite a while — in fact, he was even there for the very beginning of the Defending Our Pacific tour way back in 2004.

My name is Freddy, I am from Argentina and am the current chief engineer on board the Esperanza. Since 1994 I have worked as an engineer on tankers and fishing vessels in my country. In 2002 I had the opportunity to start working as electrician on board the Arctic Sunrise, and I gladly took the opportunity. I have continued working as electrician and engineer on board all three Greenpeace ships since then.

Since people think I'm not busy enough with my 12 hours of work every day (at least), they sometimes ask me to tattoo them. I had to stop, though, because high stress levels were leading me to confuse fairies with pin-up girls... dangerous if the tattooed subject is a big hairy sailor asking for a pin-up girl.

In 2004 I had the opportunity to be part of the crew helping launch the Defending Our Oceans campaign to establish marine reserves on board the Rainbow Warrior. It was there that I found out what a FAD is and the destructiveness of the purse seiner method of fishing. Last year I was here on the Espy and again witnessed the same thing, with the only difference that the quantity of fish on the nets was getting lower and lower.

I hope this time we are able to get the full reserves and then start heavily with the enforcement. I feel really proud of having done my bit these past few years.

Bowing to pressure from the pro-nuclear lobby, Senators Boxer and Kerry have included nuclear power into their bill to address climate change. In their proposed legislation, the Senators claim that "nuclear energy is the largest provider of clean, low-carbon, electricity...." Funny we've heard that before. In fact, the bill's nuclear section reads like it was lifted off the Nuclear Energy Institute's (NEI) website, despite its lack of veracity.

Over a decade ago, environmentalists challenged the nuclear industry's propaganda that they were clean and green. As a result, the Better Business Bureau's ( BBB ) National Advertising Division found that the Nuclear Energy Institute's ads falsely claimed that nuclear reactors make power without polluting the air and water or damaging the environment. The BBB said that, "The nuclear industry should stop calling itself 'environmentally clean' and should stop saying it makes power 'without polluting the environment.'" The director of the division said such claims were "unsupportable." The bureau agreed with environmentalists that nuclear fuel is made using electricity from coal plants and that nuclear waste poses a threat to the public health and safety.

The nuclear industry's brazen disregard for the BBB prompted the environmental groups to bring NEI before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC found that

 

[B]ecause the discharge of hot water from cooling systems is known to harm the environment, and given the unresolved issues surrounding disposal of radioactive waste, we think that NEI has failed to substantiate its general environmental benefit claim.

 

Unfortunately those same false claims have now found their way into the legislation offered by Senator's Boxer and Kerry.

Even Andrew Kadak, "Professor of the Practice" at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has acknowledged that nuclear power contributes CO2 to the environment. In a speech before the American Physical Society entitled "A Renaissance for Nuclear Energy?" Kadak bemoaned the fact that the international community had already rejected nuclear power as a solution to climate change. However, Kadak recognized that:

 

For many years, nuclear energy, while arguably a -CO2 emitting energy source, has been judged to be unacceptable for reasons of safety, unstable regulatory climate, a lack of a waste disposal solution and, more recently, economics.

 

If the Senators actually want to abate climate change rather than merely enriching nuclear corporations, we need solutions that are fast, safe and affordable, and that rules out nuclear power. The Congressional Budget Office has already determined that the risk of default on the nuclear loan guarantees congress will supply to the nuclear industry is well above 50%. Is it really the Senator's intent to support the next taxpayer bailout?

Mid American, a subsidiary of Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, has already conducted their economic due diligence on a new nuclear plant and determined that it does not make economic sense to build. If the "world's greatest investor" will not waste his resources on new nuclear power, perhaps the Senate should listen.

But Warren Buffet's corporation isn't the only one who thinks nuclear power is an economic non-starter. In April, Jon Wellinghoff, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, stated that new nuclear and coal plants are not needed. Renewable energy like wind & solar and improvements in energy efficiency will provide enough energy to meet our future energy demands. Wellinghoff concluded that nuclear and coal plants are too expensive.

In June, Moody's Investor Services released their analysis of new nuclear generation and determined that nuclear power was a "bet the farm" risk. Why should the American taxpayer be expected to support such an investment?

The history of nuclear power plant cost overruns that led Forbes magazine to call nuclear power the "largest managerial disaster in business history" is repeating itself with the current generation of nuclear reactors. Last month, the French nuclear giant, Areva announced that they had lost 550 million euros, a 79% drop in their profits, due to construction delays with their reactor in Finland. According to Areva, the 3-billion euro nuclear plant has now accumulated 2.3 billion euros in estimated losses. Does the Senate really want to repeat this fiscal fiasco in the U.S.?

Nuclear power is a deadly and dangerous distraction from real solutions to climate change and our energy needs. Nuclear power is unsafe, uneconomical & unnecessary. Rather than greenwashing nuclear power, Senators Boxer and Kerry should cut the nuclear title from their bill and work to oppose any attempts to support this failed experiment.

Jim Riccio, Nuclear Policy Analyst  

I may be in the middle of the Pacific Ocean right now, but I’m very excited to take a break from campaigning for marine reserves to bring you some HUGE news about our campaign to stop deforestation in the Amazon.

Sao Paulo, Brazil – In a major step forward for climate protection, today four of the biggest players in the global cattle industry — Marfrig, Bertin, JBS-Friboi and Minerva — joined forces to ban the purchase of cattle from newly deforested areas of the Brazilian Amazon from their supply chains, backing Greenpeace’s call for zero deforestation in the rainforest.

The move follows the release of the Greenpeace report ‘Slaughtering the Amazon’ in June, which exposed the link between forest destruction and the expansion of cattle ranching in the Amazon. This prompted calls for action from key international companies, including Adidas, Nike and Timberland, which committed to cancel contracts unless their products were guaranteed to be free from Amazon destruction, encouraging today’s move.

The announcement was made at a high-level event in Sao Paulo organized by Greenpeace, where each of the companies declared the adoption of environmental and social standards to ensure their products are free from cattle raised in newly deforested areas of the rainforest.

Measures include the monitoring of their supply chains and clear targets for the registration of farms that both directly and indirectly supply cattle as well as measures to end the purchase of cattle from indigenous and protected areas and from farms using slave labor. “This is an important step in the fight to stop the destruction of one of the world’s most critical rainforests and vital to helping tackle climate change,” said Paulo Adario, Greenpeace Amazon campaign director.

The Brazilian cattle sector, which occupies 80 percent of all deforested areas of the Amazon, is the country’s leading carbon polluter.

As the press release quoted above notes, this is not just a victory for the Amazon, but a victory for the climate as well. Deforestation is responsible for more global carbon emissions than all the planes, trains, and automobiles in the world combined.

I’m personally very glad to see that these companies have agreed to help safeguard the rights of indigenous communities as part of the deal. For more info, read the full list of minimum criteria these companies have committed to, and the full press release.

Teams from professional disaster relief agencies are now firmly in place in Samoa. With the agreement of local authorities, the Esperanza has left the area and returned to our campaign in the Pacific Ocean.

We were close by when the tsunami hit and were able to help immediately. For three days we transported and donated supplies of fuel, water, medicine and food, and carried out aerial surveys with our helicopter.

Before departing Samoa we offered our assistance to the nearby island nation of Tonga, but it was not needed.

We are thankful we were on hand to support the people of Samoa and our thoughts remain with them, as well as with American Samoa and Tonga, as they begin to rebuild their communities.

The Esperanza had previously been in Samoa just this past July. This was certainly not the way the crew had imagined going back, but they are very happy to have been of service to the many brave Samoans they met back then.

We have now returned to the high seas, where we’re campaigning to create a global network of marine reserves covering 40% of the world's oceans (read the Defending Our Pacific blog for more). Such a network would give protection to vulnerable areas like the high seas pockets between Pacific islands’ national waters, which are currently being overfished by foreign fleets and threatening the health of the tuna stocks and therefore the livelihoods of local communities.

Like the rest of the world, we were shocked and saddened when we heard the news about the tsunami that had hit the Samoan islands. And because of our proximity to the affected areas, we were in the unique position of being able to offer aid very quickly.
 
The Esperanza was sailing to support Pacific countries in oceans conservation when the earthquake that caused the tsunami hit. We immediately offered assistance and equipment to the people of Samoa, and our offer was accepted by the Samoan authorities. We have medics, engineers, technicians, and logisticians on board the ship as part of the 34-strong crew. We will provide whatever help we can, under the direction of the Samoan disaster relief teams.
 
We have put our campaign on hold and are currently in Samoa doing whatever we can to help. I am sure you will all understand that we will be too busy to post any further blogs for now.

 

This past Tuesday the Supporter Care team and a handful of Frontline staffers were fortunate enough to represent Greenpeace at the U2 concert in Washington, DC.  Greenpeace's history with U2 goes aways back, from U2 partaking in an anti-nuclear action with our UK counterparts in the early 90's to a stop aboard the Rainbow Warrior II.  If you look inside an older U2 cd, you will see a tear-out to join Greenpeace.  Believe it or not, some still trickle in with the mail.

That afternoon the thirteen of us piled into the van headed for FedEx stadium to meet with volunteers from Amnesty International, One (Bono's own), and Free Burma.  After a quick run down of our do's and don'ts: no stickering concert goers and meet back at 8:30 or else, we set off to canvass the grounds.  Our goal:  gather 900 signatures to show our government leaders they have grassroots support for strong, ambitious, science-based climate legislation in Copenhagen.  This early in the afternoon though the only people there were back in the gravel lot where the van was or rushing to claim their space in the general admission line. 

Not wanting to trek right back over the stream and through the woods, quite literally, I positioned myself near the general admission line ready to catch someone on their way to pick up their holy wristbands.  The first young man I stopped enthusiastically signed the petition but asked no questions, instead I found myself asking him questions about U2.  He said, “This is my 29^th U2 show, I’ve been following them around the states.”  Yes, you read that correctly, twenty-nineth U2 show.  I can not even wrap my mind around seeing a show twenty-nine times!  I quickly realized while these people would spare a second to sign the petition, they could not physically spare another second to talk about climate legislation.  I wondered if such die-hard Greenpeace fans existed somewhere out there in the parking lots..

Josef and I figured we would try our luck back in the gray lot where we had parked the van.  We tried our luck with a few tailgaters, got a few signatures, before spotting a couple enjoying some good eats and the afternoon sun by a bright yellow VW bug.  As we approached with clipboards outstretched and our respective Greenpeace shirts on, I opened our pitch, “Hi!  We’re with Greenpeace..” but was quickly cut off, “Oh!  Greenpeace! How awesome!”  Had we met our equivalent of the die-hard U2 fan?  Yes!  Yes, we had!  We talked about climate legislation, told them about the Greenpeace Organizing Term their freshman college daughter may be interested in, who wouldn’t be?!  An action-packed semester of organizing, non-violence training, and traveling to see first-hand areas of devastation!   I passed along my contact information for their daughter and we wished them a good time at the concert.  Riding high from meeting this couple from the DC suburbs, Josef and I headed back to the stadium ready for the show itself.

By the time 8:30 rolled around, we were being briefed on our part during the show.  We, all forty or so of us, were going to walk out on stage with U2 during “Walk On", the tribute song to pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.  Excitedly we were led down to the inner circle, the best seats in the house, and sang along through “It’s a Beautiful Day”, and the other songs that have brought U2 international acclaim the past two decades.  Finally, it was our time.  Mixed inbetween volunteers from One and the other organizations we were handed our masks of Aung San Suu Kyi, currently under house arrest in Burma.  Bono began “Walk On” and with that we filed out one by one to the front of the raised platform.  There we stood in our respective t-shirts holding our masks in unity looking out over a crowd of nearly 90,000.  I honestly do not remember hearing Bono sing, I simply remember looking down from the bottom of the mask and eyeing a sea of people and feeling an incredible, unexplainable calm.  We were sharing the stage with U2 and looking out over the same crowd.  I thought, “How many of these people did we talk to today?  Does anyone out there think, ‘Hey! I talked to that Greenpeacer earlier!’” 

Despite our exhaustion the following day, we all retold our stories from the U2 show, from meeting truly cool people and talking about Greenpeace to canvassing for food in the parking lots before the gates opened, to being a part of “Walk On” and showing our solidarity.  It was a day none of us will forget and that was only made possible by Bono’s generosity and belief in Greenpeace’s campaigns.

I have attached a video of “Walk On” from the DC show, but there are other videos available on YouTube capturing the quiet..

Today the Obama Administration, represented by DHS Undersecretary Rand Beers and EPA Assistant Administrator for Water, Peter Silva testified in support of assessments of safer more secure chemicals for all 6,000 regulated chemical facilities, and conditional implementation of safer more secure chemicals at the highest tiered facilities (approximately 800). Full Copies of their testimony (and all witnesses from the second panel) can be found here:
http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1755:energy-and-commerce-subcommittee-hearing-on-hr-3258-the-drinking-water-system-security-act-of-2009-and-hr-2868-the-chemical-facility-anti-terrorism-act-of-2009&catid=130:subcommittee-on-energy-and-the-environment&Itemid=71

Excerpts of Beers and Silva identical statements on safer more secure technologies included:

"*The Administration supports consistency of IST approaches for facilities regardless of sector.

"* The Administration believes that all high-risk chemical facilities, Tiers 1-4, should assess IST methods and report the assessment in the facilities’ site security plans. Further, the appropriate regulatory entity should have the authority to require facilities posing the highest degree of risk (Tiers 1 and 2) to implement IST method(s) if such methods enhance overall security, are feasible, and, in the case of water sector facilities, consider public health and environmental requirements.

“* For Tier 3 and 4 facilities, the appropriate regulatory entity should review the IST assessment contained in the site security plan. The entity should be authorized to provide recommendations on implementing IST, but it would not require facilities to implement the IST methods."

The hearing also made clear that the neither bill (H.R. 2868 & H.R. 3258) creates a command and control structure.  Instead it establishes conditions and incentives:
1) safer chemical processes must be feasible
2) safer chemical processes must not impose onerous costs on a facility
3) safer chemical processes must not shift risks to any other facility
4) safer chemical processes must reduce risks
5) safer chemical processes are proposed by the facility itself
6) only the highest risk facilities are required to implement safer
chemical processes
7) there is funding in both bills to assist with implementation costs

Colbert wants you to wipe with a hummer instead of an ancient forest.

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Every morning the first mate comes around at 7:30 and wakes us up. That gives us a half hour to grab some quick breakfast before we do our ship cleaning duties at 8:00. I'm not much of a breakfast person anyway, though, so many mornings I just go out to this one spot towards the bow of the ship and drink some tea. Just thought I'd share this short video I shot to give you an idea of what it's like out here.

So far on this tour we’ve done a lot of work to highlight the destructiveness of fish aggregating devices (or FADs) – and we’ve even confiscated a few as well, as there was a 2-month ban on their use in the high seas that evidently did not stop many commercial fishing vessels from using them. There's a pile of five of these things on our deck. One member of the crew described them to me as looking like giant, rusty crayons, but they're nothing nearly as benign as that.

The use of FADs results in the bycatch of many juvenile tuna and other species like sharks, turtles, and reef fish, contributing to the depletion of fish stocks and threatening vulnerable marine life.

To really show the diversity of marine life being threatened by FADs, our divers captured some footage and we’ve put together this short video:

In an absolutely heartbreaking turn of events, the European Union on September 22 refused to support Monaco’s proposal to award the northern bluefin tuna the protections of CITES Appendix I. 

I am gutted.

Even though a majority of countries within the EU – specifically those of Northern Europe, Scandinavia, and the British Isles – voted to co-sponsor, an uncompromising and hostile block of Mediterranean countries were able to defeat the process.   Because of convoluted EU law, these southern countries were able to demonstrate enough dissent within the Union that the mighty juggernaut of European bureaucracy creaked to a halt.

While 21 European nations seemed ready to support the ban, the unceasing whine generated by six short-sighted members – Spain, France, Italy, Malta, Greece, and Cyprus – was able to derail the process.  Without EU backing for Monaco’s proposal, it becomes increasingly unlikely that the bluefin tuna will find succor.  Rather, it will probably fall back under the domain of ICCAT – the very organization through whose lack of potency this magnificent fish has found itself in such dire straits.

This is not progress.

Want to point the finger at someone in particular?  No problem.  This nauseating story boasts a villain.

Remember all that nice stuff I said about Sarkozy a couple months ago?  I take it all back.  France’s first citizen has proven himself the worst type of turncoat; a traitor to his people and his planet.  France was the first country to step forward and support Prince Grimaldi’s proposal, but in recent weeks, Sarkozy has reversed his position and allied with the Mediterranean states.  If France had not switched camps, the proposal would have most likely been endorsed by the EU.  From a certain perspective, the actions of one individual may have doomed the world’s largest bony fish to an ignominious demise.

Want to tell Sarkozy what you think of his actions?  Sign Greenpeace’s petition. It's in French; Greenpeace UK has kindly provided an English translation.

Fortunately, all is not lost.  We can still save this animal – but yes, it is going to be more difficult that in otherwise would have been.

First of all, there is a chance that Europe will reverse its position.  Lobbying efforts are underway in France and other key countries, and if the balance of power can be swung away from the Mediterranean, the European Commission may vote in favor of the proposal after all.  Unfortunately, we most likely won’t know how this will fall out until early next year.  So, in the interim, Monaco’s proposal needs a new champion.

 

 

There is a meeting in Brazil in November that will revisit this issue.  Before it kicks off, we need to convince the government of a major world power to take a stand on this – and frankly, the best candidate is the United States.  If we can get Washington to step up, we can still save the bluefin tuna from extinction.

We’re gaining momentum here in the States.  The Coastal Conservation Association, a major recreational fishing association, has taken up the banner and is pushing to have Northern bluefin listed under CITES Appendix I.  President Obama’s Ocean Taskforce is traveling about the country holding open hearings on ocean issues, and the administration seems receptive to the idea of pushing this issue and creating marine reserves in the Gulf of Mexico to protect the bluefin spawning grounds.  And numerous environmental groups and activists soldier on, waving the flag and shouting to the rooftops.

Please, spread the word and get involved.  Tell your friends and co-workers about this critical issue.   Support Greenpeace’s actions in France and help us get Paris back on track.  Avoid sushi restaurants like Nobu that serve endangered bluefin tuna.   Most importantly – don’t give up on this amazing animal just yet.  We can still turn things around.

As you might have noticed, Newsweek ran a special issue this week with the cover story, "The Greenest Big Companies in America." The feature ranks the S&P 500 according to each company's environmental impact, policies and reputation. Dirt Diggers Digest points out that the list "has more validity than the usual exercises of this sort, which tend to take much of corporate greenwash at face value." But also notes "the magazine could have easily turned the list upside down and headlined its feature 'The Biggest Environmental Culprits of Corporate America'."

The web version of the Newsweek issue has a nice sidebar dedicated specifically to greenwash, which includes these snipits: 

"Many corporations ... don't do much of anything to change the way they do business, but make a big show of their dedication to Mother Earth. It's usually easy to spot these companies: They make their customers do the work, and then take the credit. In the name of saving the planet, my cable TV operator keeps asking for permission to stop sending paper statements in the mail each month. Instead, I'm supposed to check my statement online. The real reason, of course, is that doing so would save them paper, printing and postage. This is a perfectly legitimate reason for them to want me to switch. But when they pretend that it's all about the environment, it just makes me hate my cable company even more than I already do. Despite this, I would still consider switching to online statements if they would agree to use the money they save to hire cable TV repairmen who know how to repair cable TV."

"Sometimes a good ad campaign does a better job of enhancing a company's green reputation than going through the expense and hassle of adopting actual environmentally sound practices. Billboards in Washington implore me to join the cause. "I will unplug stuff more," reads one. Another says, "I will at least consider buying a hybrid." These ads are the work of Chevron, the giant oil company, whose "Will You Join Us?" ads try to convince people that saving the planet is at the top of their list. You might think that if Chevron was really worried about problems like global warming, they would spend some of those p.r. dollars lobbying Congress to adopt stricter gas mileage requirements for automobiles. They do not do this. Instead, I'm apparently supposed to praise them as environmental heroes because they tell me to unplug my toaster and think about getting a Prius. Yet ad campaigns like these work. Chevron lands at No. 371 out of 500 companies on Newsweek's green rankings."

 

 Read the full article and sidebar.

Ahoy there! I’m blogging from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza out here in the Pacific. We’ve just embarked on the second leg of the Defending Our Pacific 2009 tour, which is aimed at getting all four of the high seas pockets you see on the map below (marked in orange) designated as marine reserves – which is to say, closed to ALL fishing.



We left Port Vila, Vanuatu just a few days ago, and are currently in transit, headed back out to the high seas to continue our quest to stop the pillage of international waters by longline and purse seine fishing vessels.

A transit generally means a bit of down time, so I’m taking it upon myself to document some ship life for you. Check out these pics:


Our captain, Madeleine (with binoculars), and second mate, Nadia, on the Espy's bridge, charting a course out of Port Vila Harbor.


After taking my turn on "whale watch" yesterday evening, I stepped out onto the deck and noticed this high seas sunset. Pretty nice, eh?

For a bit of recent history, check out the blog posts by Mary Ann (here, here, and here), the intrepid webbie who I have replaced onboard (actually I only replaced her as webbie, she’s still onboard as a deckhand and is taking care of our waste and recycling in the role of "chief garbologist" — a noble and selfless job, I can tell you, having helped with the compost yesterday morning). As you can see from the blogs, the first leg of the tour was spent patrolling the first and second high seas zones to help enforce a temporary ban on fish aggregating devices (FADs) – highly destructive devices that catch EVERYTHING indiscriminately. FADs are commonly used by purse seine fishing vessels. We took direct action against those violating the ban. For instance, you can see the crew hauling a FAD we confiscated up on to the Espy here:



On the second leg of the tour, we’re going to continue searching out the pirates and the pillagers, and stand in solidarity with the Pacific island countries who are seeking a closure of the high seas pockets. We are also pushing for the implementation of sensible, sustainable fishing practices rather than longlines, purse seines, FADs, and all the other highly destructive fishing practices that are currently in use. Stay tuned.

This past winter Greenpeace partnered with the Collegiate KiteBoard Association to promote the use of Marine Reserves to help protect our oceans and its wildlife. It was fabulous to work with these energetic college students. I was especially grateful that they were putting their talents towards a cause that I hold close to my heart – saving the oceans. 

One part of this collaborative effort was to collect letters to President Obama from beach goers and ocean users expressing their sentiments about needed ocean protection. As we traveled from Jupiter to Key West, across central Fl to St. Pete, it was encouraging to see that so many people cared about the oceans and wrote short messages to President Obama. 

Everyone is well aware of how busy our new President has been since taking office and between the economy, 2 wars, healthcare and other issues there has been little time in the White House for our ocean agenda. Oh how we have might underestimated Pres. O's love and concern for our oceans.  

The President has directed his staff to work on creating a National Ocean Policy for America and restructuring the decision-making authorities of our Government to implement it. To this end he's created an ocean task force and put the Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) in charge of coordinating this historic effort. CEQ is an executive arm of the White House that deals with environmental issues including oceans. 

We now have an Obama ocean team and yesterday Greenpeace, along with other non-profit organizations, were invited to come to the CEQ office and discuss our, under development, new National Ocean Policy. It was also an opportunity to for me to give President Obama all of the letters from concerned ocean lovers collected this past winter on the beaches of FL.

The comments were so wonderful, that I wanted to share them with you. 

• Keep the earth around for our kids!
• I love Turtles!
• Help save the reefs! Make some change! You rock!
• Please take care of our oceans – I love seahorses
• Please help to preserve our natural resources – ocean, world, air
• Nobody likes a dirty beach
• Healthy oceans help keep a healthy planet

Thanks to everyone that was involved. 

-- Phil

Today leaders from the world's top 20 richest nations are at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, PA, discussing a range of global issues—global warming being a priority on the agenda. 

The world is ready for climate leadership. That's why we're continuing to put pressure on our elected officials to prevent catastrophic events of global warming by implementing science based solutions.
 
While we wait for our leaders to answer the urgent call to action, more and more young people are stepping up to the challenge. All across the U.S. and Canada Greenpeace campus coordinators and on-call activists are mobilizing youth to tackle global warming on a local and national level.

Six students in particular have shown that they are committed to the fight for climate justice. Aleah Loney of McGill University, Jess Serrante of the University of Vermont, Max Bartholomai of Southeast Community College, Audry Mills of Old Dominion University, Max Blaushild of Miami University of Ohio and Connor Gibson of the University of Vermont make up the Greenpeace Student Board for the 2009-2010 school year.  The Student Board is a team of experienced student leaders who work with the Greenpeace staff team to coordinate the Student Network. Their work includes training and mentoring other students, coordinating days of action, providing updates to Greenpeace Organizing Term alum and students in the Network, and more.

Meet the Student Board!

Aleah Loney, Trainings Coordinator

Originally hailing from Canada's West Coast, Aleah is now in her final year at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. She is completing a double major in Political Science and International Development Studies with a minor in Sociology. Aleah spent a semester in San Francisco participating in the Fall 2008 Greenpeace Organizing Term. She also attended Activist Camp 2009, Greenpeace’s summer training program for young people. Aleah is also involved in animal rights activism and loves music, dancing and traveling.

 

Jess Serrante, Trainings Coordinator

Jess is originally from New Jersey and now lives in Burlington, VT as a student at the University of Vermont. She worked on the Kleercut campaign in 2008 and participated in the GOT program in the summer in San Francisco. This year she helped recruit over 200 UVM students to attend Power Shift2009 in Washington DC. Currently, Jess is working on a campaign to shut down the Vermont Yankee, a nuclear plant whose permit is about to expire. She also enjoys yoga, hiking and reading.

 

Max Bartholomai, GOT Alum Coordinator

Max is a student at Southeast Community College in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is looking to study Environmental Sociology at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln next year.  In the Fall if 2008 he attended the Greenpeace Organizing Term in San Francisco—his first experience with environmental activism. In the past he has  worked with the Gay-Straight Alliance and helped organize rallies/marches.  Max’s hobbies include bicycling, hiking, camping, and listening to music.

 

Audry Mills, GOT Alum Coordinator

Audry attends Old Dominion University majoring in political science. She began her environmental activism by volunteering with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Surfrider Foundation organizing beach clean-ups, protesting developers, power plants and over fishing. She attended the GOT in DC in the Fall of 2007 and since then has attended two summer trainings with the Greenpeace Student Network and has volunteered with the Greenpeace Rolling Sunlight tour in the fall of 2008. She was the GOT Alum Coordinator for the Student Board last year, the first year of the Board. Outside of school and activism she enjoys surfing, yoga, painting and photography.

 

Max Blaushild , Days of Action Coordinator

Max attends the Miami University of Ohio where he has been active since his first semester. Last year he was the event coordinator for the Power Vote campaign and has taken on other roles with his campus environmental club such as media officer and volunteer for Sustainability Day. He attended the GOT in San Francisco in the spring of 2009. Over the summer he was the GOT intern in San Francisco. Max also enjoys reading, writing, and backpacking.

 

Connor Gibson, Days of Action Coordinator

Connor is an Environmental Studies student at the University of Vermont. He joined the UVM Forest Crimes unit, which worked on a successful Kleercut campaign. In the summer of 2008, he helped train students at Greenpeace’s summer training program. He served as a Student Board member last year and attended the GOT in DC last spring.  In the summer, Connor was the GOT intern in DC. Connor also has a passion for playing the drums, skateboarding and stargazing.

 

If you’re looking to develop your leadership skills join us on our monthly conference call trainings. To find out more about the Greenpeace Student Network visit us online.

The banner has come down. Greenpeace activists are safe. And, after two hours hanging from the West End Bridge, the 80x30-foot banner spoke to world leaders meeting in Pittsburgh at the G20 summit.

"Why am I here today?" The activists share their story in this inspirational video.



I get goose bumps every time I watch this video. The line that sticks in my head each time I watch is, "as Americans we need to do the right thing, especially when it's hard."

It's not easy to change the way the world operates. There is no "easy button" to turn off all the pollution and resource destruction. But, the reality is—burning fossil fuels for energy is destroying our planet. We need a fundamental switch to clean, renewable energy in order for future generations to have, well, a future.



I realize that's not easy. It will take all of us working together, building "green" infrastructure. But, I believe that fighting for a clean healthy future for my son is worth it. I want to be able to look him in the eyes and tell him I did everything I could to make sure he could touch a 1,000 year old tree, swim in pollutant-free rivers, breath fresh air and see glaciers.

I'm not a climber, but I was able to hang my very own Greenpeace banner—on Facebook! There is a really neat new app, try it out.

And, if you haven’t taken action yet, please do. President Obama needs to hear from all of us that we are ready for a strong world climate treaty. Together, we can do great things.

--Michelle

Greenpeace activists are hanging off a Pittsburgh bridge with a massive banner displaying our message to G20 leaders gathering for tomorrow's summit. The banner takes the form of stylized "road sign" that warns of the political maneuvering and delay that have put a international climate treaty in jeopardy as the world enters the final stretch on the road to Copenhagen.

An update I just read on the Pittsburgh Business Times said, "Security personnel surrounded the area, with a bomb squad car directing traffic, and Army Corp., state police and city of Pittsburgh boats located in the water near the bridge."

We are all gathered here at the office watching a live video feed of activists repelling from the Pittsburgh bridge. We are all biting our fingernails, waiting to see what happens next.

Watch with us!

And, when the video gets taken down – you can follow live updates on the Greenpeace website.

The reason Greenpeace hung this massive banner is because world leaders need to work towards global warming solutions NOW!

World financial representatives and leaders of the G20 (19 of the world's largest national economies, plus the European Union) are meeting in Pittsburgh to discuss both the global financial crisis and the global climate crisis.

It is important for G20 leaders to kick-start economic recovery through clean energy investment. These elements are vital to achieve a good deal in Copenhagen and avert catastrophic global warming.

Are you ready to step up to the plate? Join us in pressuring world leaders to act now before it’s too late. We can show world leaders the impact that civil society can have on solving the world’s challenges when we are unified.

Now more than ever, we need President Obama's leadership to stop global warming, and he needs to hear from YOU! 

Sorry, folks, the Supreme Court must have been wrong about CO2 being an air pollutant.  I stumbled upon the Truth in the form of this half-page ad in Monday’s Washington Post:

Not only is there no scientific evidence that CO2 is a pollutant, higher CO2 concentrations actually help ecosystems support more plant and animal life… Higher levels of CO2 result in more plant growth as well as less water being required for plants to grow faster and larger.  In fact, we all exhale CO2 and enjoy it in our carbonated beverages.

This blows my mind.  I don’t even know how to categorize this latest piece of big-oil-funded misdirection. Junk science? Botany for third graders? Blatant untruthiness? 

CO2isgreen, Inc., the non-profit “with questionable parentage” that funded the ad, has already been called out twice in the blogosphere - once by Grist.org and again by Scienceblogs.com.  Miles Grant correctly points out H. Leighton Steward’s position as an honorary director at the American Petroleum Institute, recently in the news for staging astroturf campaigns, as well as his connection to numerous big oil companies:

He’s also a director at EOG Resources, an oil and gas company, a position in which he earned a whopping $617,151 last year. Steward is formerly head of Burlington Resources, now a part of ConocoPhillips) and former Chairman of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association and the Natural Gas Supply Association. Not a word about any of that in his bio on the site.

The one connection that Grant missed is that Steward is currently Chairman of the Board of The Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at SMU, which has received $76,500 since 1998 from everybody’s favorite greenhouse gangster, ExxonMobil.

James Hrynyshyn paints a softer picture of Steward after talking to him on the phone, describing him as “earnest,” and insisting:

…he's not a dupe of Big Oil trying to pull the wool over our eyes. At least, not consciously… He simply doesn’t doesn't accept the mountains of evidence that carbon dioxide is a significant greenhouse gas, and that small changes in its atmospheric concentration can have a big impact on climate.

Forgive my cynicism, but if it looks like big oil, works for big oil and gets paid by big oil, then it must be an earnest Joe with a penchant for taking out half-page ads in major news publications.

If we are going to base our science on experiments carried out by 8-year-olds, let us discuss these carbonated beverages that we so much enjoy.  It has long been known that carbonated beverages rot your teeth, due primarily to the carbonic acid, which forms when CO2 is dissolved in water. More CO2 in the air means more CO2 in the water.  The resulting acidification is rotting our oceans:

Almost half of all the carbon dioxide emitted since industrialization has been absorbed by the ocean. [Acidification] deprives animals like hard corals and certain mollusks and plankton of the raw material for their calcium carbonate shells and skeletons. This may ultimately cause the world’s oceans to become corrosive to such animals, and coral reefs to dissolve.

The science of our carbon burden is clear.  What is unclear is whether world leaders gathered in New York for a UN summit on climate change can be convinced to act in the interest of the many and the future rather than the few and the now.

Watching The Age of Stupid reminded me of one of my favorite movies, The Usual Suspects. It also starred actor Pete Postlethwaite. "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." This quote the Usual Suspects was dancing around in my head as the movie showed the year 2020, a world where global warming effects is at its peak and devastation is all around. We have spent so much time and energy convincing all the nay-sayers that global warming truly exists, that we have precious little time to enact solutions that will address issues before it's too late.

The movie is about an archivist in the devastated world of the future, asking the question: "Why didn't we stop climate change when we still had the chance?" He looks back on footage of real people around the world in the years leading up to 2015 before runaway climate change took place.

Last night, the movie premiered in New York City. Politicians and celebrities strolled the green carpet past paparazzi into a truly low-carbon solar-powered movie theater.


Hip Hop Artist, David Banner

The premiere was broadcast live last night to 440 movie theaters across the United States. And, today, the global premier3 continues on over 330 movie screens in 63 nations around the globe. The total audience watching this event well exceeds one million people.

Actress, Heather Graham on the green carpet

Check your local theater to see if this movie is playing in your community. And, take action to tell world leaders that you’re ready for a meaningful (with sharp teeth) global climate treaty, now while we still have the chance.

Greenpeace activist Ashley Mirabile travels in a 'you-turn-the-earth' globe

 

Today, Hundreds of volunteers form a human countdown in Central Park as Climate Week kicks off in NYC. Global leaders have only three months to get their act together and sign a strong Climate Treaty in Copenhagen. Take action today and help show our leaders that this movement is massive and unstoppable.

Image © Avaaz

This week, Planet Green's Focus Earth program airs an episode on greenwash. In the episode Bob Woodruff interviews environmental and corporate watchdog expert Kenny Bruno, author of Greenwash and Corporate Environmentalism, and myself from Greenpeace, to answer the question: are corporate green efforts for show only, or can they actually make amends for decades of un-sustainable, even downright harmful, business choices? Woodfuff also gets up close with leaders from Royal Dutch Shell, Ford Motor Company and Duke Energy to examine their environmental statements and actions. 

Watch clips from the show and find airtimes here.

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

Check out video of a press conference the team over at CROC just did. They're getting pretty desperate. They claim to have been endorsed by a "prominent environmental organization:"


There’s a bunch more of this type of insanity going on over at TheCROC.org. They have an “Earned Devastation Calculator” that lets you compute how much environmental devastation you’re “entitled” to based on the good things you’ve done for the environment. (Then you can Tweet the results or sending them to Facebook. It’s utterly shameless.)

A few days ago I wrote about carbon offsets, the push from corporate polluters to include them in the  American carbon market that would be created by ACES, and why that’s such a bad idea. I also posted the PSA from a new organization called the Carbon Regulatory Offset Committee (CROC), which advocates expanding the offset program to individuals.

CROC is not promoting the voluntary offsets you might purchase to offset the carbon emissions from flying in a plane or powering your home. CROC is determined to give Americans the “right” to do harm to the environment in return for the good things they do for the environment – using the very same logic coporate polluters use when they argue that they should be allowed to continue dumping carbon emissions into our air in exchange for purchasing offsets to protect forests somewhere else in the world. The bottom line is that emissions must come down. Corporate polluters shouldn’t be able to buy their way out of it with offsets – which aren’t even a reliable trade-off by any measure.

Not only do offsets allow polluters to continue business as usual, but they’re difficult to measure reliably – especially over the long-term. In fact, the largest auditor of clean-energy projects in the world was just suspended by UN inspectors "after it was unable to prove its staff had properly vetted projects that were then approved for the [European] carbon-trading scheme."

Of course, the folks at CROC responded with a blog titled “The UN needs to take a chill pill."

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

 

Traitor Joe here. Some people think what I do to the ocean is bad. I have a nasty habit of selling red-list seafood in my stores and then deceiving my customers about the truth. I know it's bad for the ocean ecosystem, but I just can't help myself. It's an addiction to being bad and harming critters big and small.



After you watch my karaoke video I'm sure you'll agree that I can keep being as bad as I want to. Don't bother taking action to try and stop me. It'll be a giant waste of your time. 

Insincerely yours,
Traitor Joe

                                                                                                                                                    This fall, the Greenpeace Student Network is fighting for our planet’s future and demanding climate action now. All across the country, student activists are holding their first meetings of the semester, having kickoff events, and turning up the pressure on decision makers to implement science based solutions to global warming.

Here are some highlights of what's been happening across the country:

At Iowa State, student activists began their semester by gathering hundreds of petitions and rallying against a dirty coal plant on campus. They even made headlines!

In Atlanta, Georgia State student activists are planning a huge rally for the October 24th International Day of Action on Climate. They are expecting hundreds of people with prominent guest speakers, media, and a unified message that world leaders must act now on climate.

In Virginia, student activists at James Madison University are mobilizing their campus to take on climate this semester. They are doing a large recruitment drive and getting new volunteers each day! A movement, like none before, is growing on campus.

While Congress and President Obama have failed to be leaders on climate, our current generation is stepping up to the plate to deliver results! I am so inspired by the amazing work already underway this semester. Working with student activists has taught me one thing: they are a driving force for positive change.

Are you inspired like me? Are you ready for climate action? Then don't miss a second of the action! Stay in the know about important updates with the Student Network. Join us on Facebook and on Twitter.

To get involved with the Student Network, email us!

Get ready for a movement like you've never seen before!

David

If you do something good for the environment, does it make any sense that you should then be entitled to do something bad to the environment?

Of course it doesn’t. And yet that is basically what corporate polluters are pushing for as climate legislation makes its way through Congress. Rather than making required pollution cuts, they want to use “carbon offsets,” which would essentially allow them to continue their dirty, polluting business as usual while outsourcing green jobs and cleaner skies elsewhere…mostly overseas!

Amazingly, despite the fact that offsets could totally undermine our efforts to combat global warming –letting polluters increase greenhouse gas emissions for years to come – there is now a group out there advocating carbon offsets be made available to individuals, so that regular folks can also be entitled to do something bad to the environment if they do something good for it. The group is called the Carbon Regulatory Offset Committee (CROC). Check out this video from their charismatic spokesman, Carl Cordova:


Offsets work like this: rather than making required emissions reductions, polluters outsource their obligations – paying others to protect forests overseas, for instance. The flaws in this scheme are manifold. Aside from allowing polluters to evade their responsibility to reduce their emissions as quickly as possible in order to prevent runaway global warming, offsets are difficult to measure and verify.

How much forest, a living ecosystem that is constantly changing, do you have to protect to equal a ton of carbon? How do you make sure it gets protected over the long-term? If it burns in a totally natural forest fire, does it still count as an offset? Most importantly, how do you make sure the same amount of deforestation doesn’t just happen somewhere else instead?

You really need to check out TheCROC.org to appreciate just how insane offsets are.

It was on this day, in 1971, that the first Greenpeace crew unfurled their triangular green sail, emblazoned with the peace and ecology symbols, and set out from Vancouver to change the world.  

Their mission was to sail into the heart of a U.S. nuclear test zone and peacefully prevent the destruction of Amchitka, a pristine island ecosystem off the coast of Alaska.  In their rusty little fishing boat, the 12 activists stood up to the greatest military force on the planet... 

...What followed was a wave of public support that ultimately shut down the U.S. nuclear testing program, won Amchitka designation as a wildlife sanctuary, and gave birth to the Greenpeace movement.

From our humble beginnings nearly 40 years ago, Greenpeace has grown into one of the largest and most respected environmental organizations in the world.  Today, Greenpeace operates in over 45 countries and commands a fleet of research and activist ships, which have sailed against environmental destruction on all of the seven seas.  We employ world-renowned scientists, policy experts, and grassroots strategists to lead our campaigns.  Greenpeace even has official standing at the United Nations.

But unlike other non-profit organizations, Greenpeace remains an independent citizens’ movement at its core.  We accept no money from governments or corporations.  That’s why we’ve been so successful in bringing about real change for the planet.  That’s also why your support is so critical.

PLEASE CLICK HERE to rush a special birthday donation to Greenpeace, as we gear up for a major campaign against the greatest environmental threat of our generation: global warming. 

From all of us here at the Greenpeace Headquarters, thank you for your continued support. These past few decades would not have been possible without you. 

I leave you with a transcript of Ben Metcalfe's transmission from the ship, which was broadcast on the CBC radio the night of Greenpeace's maiden voyage...

We call our ship the Greenpeace because that’s the best name we can think of to join the two great issues of our times: the survival of our environment and the peace of the world…

We do not consider ourselves to be radicals. We are conservatives, who insist upon conserving the environment for our children and future generations… If there are radicals in this story, they are the fanatical technocrats who believe they have the power to play with this world like an infinitely fascinating toy of their own. We do not believe they will be content until they have smashed it like a toy.

The message of the Greenpeace is simply this: The world is our place … and we insist on our basic human right to occupy it without danger from any power group. This is not a rhetorical presumption on our part. It is a sense and idea that we share with every ordinary citizen of the world…

If you haven't already seen the 2008-2009 Annual Report for Greenpeace, please explore it! After months of working on it, picking the highlights from 2008 and trying to pick out a few photos from the amazing ones we have,  like this one:

The Annual Report is done! I couldn't be happier! 

One week from today, the largest live film event in the world will take place for the global premiere of The Age of Stupid. As you no doubt have inferred from the many tweets and blogs we've posted, Greenpeace has partnered with the filmmakers to promote the film, mobilize moviegoers, and make the global premiere a green event to be remembered for all time.

The Age of Stupid has been called a docu-drama-animation hybrid, which probably means nothing to you, but there it is. It's also been called "the next, far hipper An Inconvenient Truth." The movie stars Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the global warming-ravaged world of 2055, watching archive footage from 2008 and desperately wondering: Why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?

Here's a sneak peek at one of the coolest animations from the movie:

On September 21st, communities around the world will be gathering in movie theaters, community centers, stadiums, and even on beaches where makeshift screens will be set up so that people can view the movie and be inspired to call on their leaders to act.  In New York City, a "green carpet" premiere will take place, with celebrities arriving by sustainable transportation (bike, rickshaw, train, boat, etc.). There are also several cities around the US having "simulcast" events, you can find locations and buy tickets here.

To give you a small taste of what you might expect at the premiere events, as well as the reason we think this movie is so important, here's a video of Eric Philips, polar explorer on board the Arctic Sunrise, which was used to open the Australian premiere of the film:

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….”

 

As a Senator and as a candidate, President Obama championed legislation to eliminate the consequences of a catastrophic terrorist attack or accident at chemical plants across the US. The bills he sponsored, supported and voted for in the U.S. Senate and championed in his campaign for President are exactly what is needed to address these vulnerabilities.  

However, the Obama Administration has yet to support the chemical security legislation now pending in Congress.

As we observe the eighth anniversary of 9/11 we cannot think of a better time for President Obama to clarify the administration’s support for this legislation, H.R. 2868 & H.R. 3258 as introduced.

In the coming weeks, the House Energy and Commerce Committee plans to take up these bills. The ultimate test of their success is whether they will require security measures that protect neighboring communities in the event of an attack on a chemical plant.

With time running out, a coalition of environmental, labor, health, and environmental justice groups (including Greenpeace) has sent a letter to President Obama calling on him to show leadership on an issue vitally important to the safety and security of communities across America. To Read the letter for yourself, click here.

Traitor Joe here. I have two words for you—Re.Diculous. That’s how I’d describe the video I just watched. A lonely fish singing karaoke—it’s ridiculous!

You have to see it to believe it.



Actually, watching that video over and over again just makes my mouth water. That orange roughy looks like a tasty dinner. He’s endangered, one-of-a-kind and I bet he’d taste good with a nice side of cole slaw.

If I could only get my hooks into that orange roughy my day would be complete. He’d be singing the blues and I’d be laughing all the way to the bank. Like I’ve said before, if it’s good for my wallet, I don’t care if it’s bad to the ocean or environment.

Just try stopping me! I’ll find that orange roughy and any other sea life that I can sink my hooks into.

Insincerely yours,
Traitor Joe

One of the biggest issues being brought before the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) during its quarterly meeting on October 1 – 9, 2009 at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Anchorage has a really long title. It is Proposed Ammendment 94 to the Fishery Management Plan for Groundfish of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area to Require Trawl Sweep Modification in the Bering Sea Flatfish Fishery, Establish a Modified Gear Trawl Zone, and Revise Boundaries of the Northern Bering Sea Research Area and Saint Matthew Island Habitat Conservation Area 1. Wheww. That is long. The long and the short of it are this.

The yellow fin sole and other flat fish fishery wants more area in the Bering Sea to fish in. This because they say that the fish they want to catch is moving north due to climate changes in the Southern Bering Sea. We have a different opinion. And they want to use a “modified gear change to their fishing gear” that a scientist from the National Marine Fisheries Service says, “will lower the substrate destruction in this fish prosecution.” This is the “modification” that they are talking about. They are putting rollers on the cable that drags along the bottom of the ocean to lift that cable two inches off the bottom so “other life on the bottom” will not be disturbed. To be fair, they said the other life will not be destroyed as much as they would be if the rollers were not put on this really large and long heavy cable used to drag the bottom. Well this is going to destroy the bottom of the Bering Sea in any event. Now we must ask some questions about this proposed change in the Bering Sea Fishery Management Plan.

One is; on the research done to determine that this practice will do less harm, was there any peer review done to verify this data? The second question is; when the NPFMC is proposing to open up a here-to-fore Northern Research Area right next to Saint Matthew Island probably the size of Rhode Island, are there any other oversight issues and Federal and State Agencies that need to be consulted?

And finally; do the people who are to be most affected by this change need notification and consultation before a final rule is made? Just looking at the issue of the research and its findings, I am wondering why a "peer review" process was not done before the findings are made public. According to a news release in 2003 from the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, whenever any Federal Agency is involved in any research the size of this one, OMB says, "...all significant regulatory-science documents will be subjected to peer review by qualified specialists in appropriate technical disciplines." (Emphs my own). In a discussion I had with the researcher, there was none. Also the Data Quality Act passed by Congress states further: "...requires federal agencies to issue information quality guidelines ensuring the quality, utility, objectivity and integrity of information that they disseminate and provides..." (Emphs my own). I am wondering if this has been done.

It is time for the owners of this most precious resource, We The People, to ensure that how these resources are used to line the pockets of a few multi-national big business companies do so while following the laws we all have to follow. And to ensure that any Federal Agency responsible for any research done to seemingly support these big business companies, do the same. Can there be conflict of interest? Sure.

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

Once you’ve witnessed a wildland fire, you’ll never forget it.  The haze that filters sunlight, casting a strange, darkened light.  The dramatic flare-ups that consume trees like matches.  The massive plumes of smoke that mimic mushroom clouds.  And maybe most of all, the pervasive smoke that gets everywhere, creeping beyond closed doors and sticking to clothes.

While fires are an important part of the natural balance in some American ecosytems, scientists tell us global warming is setting up hotter, drier conditions that could lead to more large, dangerous fires. Weather and climate are very complicated phenomenon, so there's plenty of science being to understand this; you can read more here and here.

This means more people and property at risk, more firefighter lives on the line, and more taxpayer dollars sapped by expensive emergency responses.

What can be done?  Fire experts tell us we need to spend more money on preventative measures – things that improve our safety, save money, and lower the likelihood of dangerous conflagrations in the future.  There is a long list of those measures, from creating fire-resistant “defensible space” around buildings, to the controlled burning of fire-dependent wildlands.

However, one of the most important preventative measures is receiving less attention: fighting global warming.  We can, and should, stop run-away temperature rise from making droughts, heat waves and fires worse.

The moment to do this is now.  Away from the smoke-shrouded mountains of southern California, international leaders are struggling to create a climate treaty.  The deadline for this is rapidly approaching in December when UN climate talks wrap up in Copenhagen.

The main problem preventing progress is a lack of leadership from developed countries in two key areas: (1) commitments to serious cuts in pollution and (2) substantial funding to fight global warming and its effects in developing countries.

The first one is pretty straightforward.  In order to fight global warming, developed countries need to cut climate pollution aggressively.  So far, few have shown any real commitment to this.  Instead, countries like the U.S. have set weak targets, then filled them offsets to outsource green jobs, cleaner skies elsewhere.  In a recent media interview, Representative Rick Boucher (R-VA) summed up the effects of offsets on pollution reductions succintly: “…an electric utility burning coal will not have to reduce the emissions at the plant site.  It can just keep burning coal.”  Needless to say, loopholes and outsourcing won’t get us where we need to go.
 
The second commitment, providing funding, does not mean another big bailout fueled by taxpayer dollars.  If properly designed, cap and trade systems make big polluters pay for their pollution instead of lining their pockets with windfall profits.  For a total of $140 billion worldwide, this funding would allow us to protect the world's most vulnerable people from the worst impacts of climate change, help developing countries “leapfrog” dirty energy development and stop deforestation (a leading source of climate pollution).

Now is the time for President Obama to step up and provide leadership.  In gatherings later this month at the United Nations in New York and the G-20 in Pittsburgh, world leaders will have an historic opportunity to make real progress towards a climate deal.  If they act like poll-watching politicians instead of real leaders, our future may be left out high, hot and dry.

As world leaders prepare to meet at the United Nations in New York on September 22nd to discuss the urgent issue of climate change, Greenpeace and other groups are working on an event to show these leaders that time for action is running out.

On September 20th, thousands of citizens from all walks of life will gather for a creative action in Central Park — a Human Countdown. This international media photo opportunity will demonstrate to these world leaders that the time to act is running out and call for necessary steps by President Obama and others to bring about a new climate deal.

To join us in Central Park: RSVP

This is a critical time — climate change is happening right now. Our world leaders can choose a safe and stable climate, or they can choose more natural disasters, famines, and climate refugees. It is imperative that world leaders agree on a global climate deal that is fair, ambitious and binding in December 2009 in Copenhagen.

The Human Countdown is the flagship event kick starting the Climate Wake Up Call, a series of coordinated events happening around the world.

WHEN: Sunday, September 20th @ 1:00 PM

WHERE: Trump Wollman Ice Rink, Central Park

Best Entrance: Central Park South (59th Street) and 6th Avenue. Wollman Rink is a two minute walk into Central Park from this entrance. Follow the footpath directly into the park.

RSVP HERE

See you there!

Eva Erbskorn
Field Organizer
Greenpeace USA

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

The Arctic Sunrise left Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord on August 30 and has been motoring north up the east coast of Greenland since then. It's been a palette of greys outside — grey water, grey sky, grey fog. It's nothing like the unbroken weeks of sunshine we experienced in northwest and southeast Greenland. Here on the northeast coast all we've seen since leaving Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord is shades of grey. We haven't seen any clear skies, sea ice or icebergs to break the monotony of greys.


Click the image to view more "Climate Impacts" pics from the Arctic Expedition 2009 on Flickr.

Until this afternoon, when Arne, our ice pilot, alerted us to the presence of an “ice blink” on the port side of the ship. An ice blink is a bright stripe of white on the horizon between sea and sky that indicates sea ice, it’s actually the reflection or glare from sea ice onto low clouds. I have no idea why it’s called an “ice blink,” and neither does Arne, who is a walking dictionary on sea ice. Perhaps it has something to do with shutting your eyes most of the way — as if you’re blinking — and only having a thin strip of vision? Or maybe the word is derived from a Norwegian or Danish term that has to do with ice or glare? I have no idea. All I know is that the ice blink means sea ice, and sea ice means happiness.

Why does sea ice mean happiness? Because it tamps down ocean swells and waves and guarantees the Arctic Sunrise can motor along without the trademark rolling, pitching and corkscrewing of this keel-free icebreaker. This ship is built like an egg, and it's famous for making even the heartiest sailor seasick. For some reason I avoided getting seasick since leaving Amsterdam on June 12, but all that ended on August 31 when the ship hit some swells and winds that caused her to corkscrew – a motion that caused just about everyone on board to succumb to seasickness.

And seasick I got. In spades. At one point I could not even make it to the toilet down the alleyway, I just hunkered down on the floor of my cabin with a bowl. It was miserable, I tell you, and I swore to myself that I would never, ever step foot on a Greenpeace ship again. If there was a way to jump ship and get to land I would have taken it, I felt that wretched. It kept up through lunchtime yesterday, September 2 when the seas flattened out and, in the words of our Russian doctor on board, Valeriy, “I finally found the meaning of true happiness.”

The appearance of the ice blink this afternoon signals calm seas and means the worst of the transit from Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord to 79 Glacier is behind us. It also means we’ll soon arrive at 79 Glacier and the independent scientists on board will be able to continue their research on the complex interactions between climate change, oceans and glaciers in east Greenland. It also means we’ll soon be able to send more pictures, videos and eyewitness accounts of the impacts of climate change on Greenland’s glaciers to the public, media and policy makers, which in the end, is what keeps us all going. We can’t expect world leaders to come up with a fair, ambitious and binding climate policy in Copenhagen this December without us, the public, putting pressure on them to deliver the goods. And bearing witness to the Arctic meltdown provides the impetus for the pressure.

With so much at stake and so many people all over the planet doing so much to pressure their heads of state to make the right decisions in Copenhagen, the least I can do is to put up with a bit of seasickness. Looking back, it was over in a blink, anyway.

A few months back, I was lucky enough to enter our archives.  The temperature controlled room, deep in the heart of the office, is a highly organized system housing every imaginable artifact of Greenpeace US history.  From crew members' photos aboard the Phyllis Cormack to the latest newsletter, the archives tell the story of how a few brave activists setting sail for Amchitka in 1971 grew to be the leading independent environmental organization today. 

I could spend days upon days browsing the immense collection of records, and scratching my head: fanny packs? visors?

but not having endless time to hang out in the archives and ponder some Greenpeace attire, I sat down with our archivist Nikolas.

Describe your role as archivist:

• My job as GP archivist is to preserve and document GP's history and historical documents and artifacts, and maintain the organization's institutional memory.  As an organization with a 40 year history, it's important to preserve our history because our foundation is a critical part of who we are and shows that we have long-standing expertise and credibility on environmental issues.  When people talk about saving whales, we can show that we essentially started the movement.  When people debate global warming, we can prove that we've been on the right side since the 1970s.  We've exposed scams, lies and crimes for decades and the archives is the record of those successes.

Do you have a favorite record?

• Telexes from the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior.  When French agents bombed the ship in 1985 in New Zealand, messages were sent from Auckland to other offices, giving a minute-by-minute account of the aftermath of the attack and the realization and shock of losing one of our crewmembers.  Oh, and I like buttons.

Many thanks to Nikolas for keeping the archives in top shape!  If you ever come across an old Greenpeace article and have a question about it, you can bet Nikolas will be able to tell you more about it!  For example, when I forwarded an e-mail that read: At a cafe in Porstmouth, NH I saw a poster in the men's room entitled, Stepping Lightly on the Earth: a Minimum Impact Guide to the Home, Nik appeared leaflet in hand within the hour.

In addition,  we have a bare bulletin board over here that could really benefit from some supporter pictures!  Whether wearing a vintage tee, personal photos from a volunteer action, or even an old article found way back in the kitchen drawer, we'd love to see it!  You can e-mail us attachments at info@wdc.greenpeace.org or mail them to the below address.  I mean, how cute is Zoe in her Mom's childhood "Save the Seals" tee?!

 

As you have no doubt heard by now, a variety of conservative organizations led by a Big Oil industry group are staging Astroturf rallies around the country to "protest" global warming legislation. What you may not know is that a self-proclaimed eco-friendly company, Verizon, is co-sponsoring a rally in West Virginia. And not just any rally, but the "Friends of America" rally, which is organized by Massey Energy, a union-busting coal company that's a major force behind mountaintop removal in Appalachia.

Verizon is always asking, "Can you hear me now?" So call Verizon and make sure they can hear YOU. Tell them that their support of this global warming denial rally is unacceptable. Here's what to do:

1. Call 908-559-2000 (Verizon's executive offices - you can probably leave a message)
2. Tell them you have a complaint you want to register with the company. If you're a customer of Verizon, mention that fact.
3. Here's what to say:

I just heard that Verizon is a sponsor of a rally THIS LABOR DAY in West Virginia that is denying the reality of global warming and obstructing climate solutions. This is outrageous and unacceptable. Global warming is important to me because XXXX. I demand that Verizon withdraw sponsorship of this rally immediately.

You can also mention that unless Verizon pulls out of this rally, you will (choose whichever applies to you):

a. Drop your Verizon service (or will likely drop your service)
b. You will tell your friends to drop their Verizon service
c. You will never be a Verizon wireless customer

If that first number doesn't work, try these:

845-365-7700 Verizon Executive Services
908-717-3115 Verizon Escalation Hotline
240-568-2459 Verizon Executive Relations
908-559-7000 Verizon headquarters

After you make the call, you can go here and let us know how it went. Thanks for taking the time to make your voice heard and let Verizon know that we can hear them, and we don't like what we're hearing!

Last Thursday, the Esperanza left Suva, Fiji and embarked on the Defending Our Pacific 2009 tour. During the two-month tour, the Espy will patrol international waters in the Central and Western Pacific Ocean and help ensure that international tuna fleets adhere to the two-month ban on purse seine fleets using.

I realize that was a lot of technical speak and campaign jargon, and that I should really explain what all that means, but there is a much more pressing matter at hand: The tour has already scored its first victory against the commercial fishing fleets who are brazenly violating the ban and using highly destructive FADs!

But I’ll let our webbie onboard the Espy, Mary Ann, tell the story:

FAD Watch (And It’s Not About Trendy Fashion)

Date: Tuesday, 31 August 2009
Location: High Seas Area 1, Western Pacific Ocean
Weather conditions: Sunny day, clear skies, light breeze
Objective: To look out for FADs

A few days ago, we arrived in the High Seas of the Pacific. Since yesterday, we have been on constant watch, scanning the horizon by day, the radar by night, diligently on the look-out for FADs and fishing boats.

Up in the bridge, Gabriel (one of our dive team, and resident shark expert) was the first to go on FAD watch at 8 in the morning. And, lo and behold, you guessed it … he spotted the very thing we were looking for — a FAD!

What’s a FAD, you ask? For the unfamiliar, FAD stands for Fish Aggregating Device. Like a magnet, FADs are designed to attract tuna into an set area. The fish are then caught by industrial purse seiners. These devices not only attract tuna, but also a host of other species such as sharks, turtles and other fish.

These FADs float at sea until they have attracted a sizable enough population of tuna. Once enough tuna are attracted, the fish and all other accumulated marine life is scooped up in a huge net, in one fell swoop. It’s a very wasteful way of fishing.

The irony of the situation is that we have found this FAD right in the middle of a two-month ban, from 1 August to 30 September. The ban was declared by the Pacific Tuna Commission, which manages tuna fishing in the international waters of the region.

So there I was walking around, a sleepy zombie, until I snapped awake when someone told me we’d found a FAD. There was a general hubbub going on around me. Deckies were by the inflatables, getting ready to launch them. The divers were checking their dive equipment and gearing up in the wet room. Breakfast was a distant memory of wolfing down one buttered toast as I hurried to catch the action. It was the same general excitement when I went up the bridge, the campaign team were complete and two binoculars were trained on the bobbing FAD.

The African Queen (one of our inflatable boats) sped to the bobbing FAD. Our divers soon discovered that schools of fish had already gathered around it.

As well as sharks, some of them juvenile too!

Normally, these FADs act like deadly fish magnets. But these critters were spared the usual fate that befalls the marine life lured to them. Instead, it was the FAD itself that we fished out of the water. It turned out to be a floating drum, looking very much like a huge brown crayon, caked with rust, barnacles and containing some small fish annoyed to be (temporarily) taken out of the water.

Finding this FAD was both good and bad at the same time. Good, because we were able to find one and confiscate it, but bad because this is a wasteful practice used by industrial fishing companies to increase their tuna catch, and despite the ban in place, we still found one. If the use of FADs continues, tuna stocks face a grim future in the region, and other marine life (such as sharks and turtles) will continue to become the unintended casualties of industrial fishing.

For Gabriel, the reward for his early-morning FAD spotting was the chance to get into the water with some of his sharky friends, and to know they are — at least for now — safe from harm.

-Mary Ann

Images: © Greenpeace/Hilton

I’m especially excited about this tour because, in addition to the many great stories and amazing images I’m sure we can expect for the next two months, I get to take over from Mary Ann at the end of September as the onboard webbie!!! (In case my gratuitous use of triple exclamation points doesn’t convey this to you: I’m ridiculously excited.)

Mary Ann will keep posting updates here throughout the next month, until I take over. So keep tuning in right here to the GPUSA blog for more updates, more amazing images, and more successes in defending the Pacific!

Greenpeace's icebreaker-class research ship, the Arctic Sunrise, is currently on an expedition to document the impacts of global warming on Greenland's glaciers, polar bears, and native peoples.

But, as California burns and another major hurricane barrels toward the West coast, we can say with some certainty that we are already witnessing the effects of global warming in our very own backyard.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared states of emergency in several counties as eight separate wildfires continue to ravage The Golden State.  One of the fires in the mountains north of Los Angeles has exploded to more than triple its size since Sunday, scorching over 121,000 acres of forest and putting at least 12,500 homes at risk.

The governor has ordered mandatory evacuations in all of the affected areas as thousands of firefighters work to contain the wildfires.  Many have been injured and, over the weekend, the inferno claimed the lives of two men who were bravely battling the flames.

 

 

While the causes of the California wildfires remain unknown, their unrelenting ferocity is being blamed on recent temperatures, which have been in the triple-digits in some inland Los Angeles areas. Hundreds of thousands of acres have already burned this summer, the worst damage in years, and researchers expect that figure to rise well above average before the season is over.

California is also in the middle of one of its most active hurricane seasons in decades.  There have already been ten named storms this summer, seven of which have occurred during the month of August.  As thousands flee the wildfires, Hurricane Jimena is spinning its way toward the Baja California coastline.  The storm is currently listed as a Category 4, with powerful winds over 155 miles per hour, but some are predicting that Jimena will reach Category 5 before it hits land.

Scientists have been telling us that, as the planet continues to get warmer, we can expect an increased frequency and intensity of both summer forest fires and hurricanes.  It is now painfully clear that global warming is upon us, whether we like it or not. 

We have been warned that the only way to stop runaway climate change and prevent the worst impacts of global warming is with a new international climate treaty that would reduce global warming pollution 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020.

But, despite his inaugural pledge to “return science to its rightful place,” President Obama has put the full support of his administration behind a climate bill that gives billions to the coal industry – the number one source of global warming pollution in the U.S. – and only calls for a 4% reduction in emissions by 2020.

We now have less than 100 days until the U.N. Climate Convention in Copenhagen, where the new international climate treaty must be agreed upon.  Please TAKE ACTION now, and tell the President to become a leader in the battle against global warming.

I consider myself a daring individual. I like karaoke, I am willing to try new things and take risks. I enjoy non-violent direct action as a way to bring about change in cultures, societal norms and political climates.

No one can compare to these Greenpeace Activists in India though. These activists scaled a thermal power plant in Kolaghat, India 2 days after the Kingsnorth 6. They, unlike the K6, are still waiting to have their charges dropped. (It's been two years.) See their video talking about why they took action:

 

So inspirational. So amazing. The physical, emotional, and mental strenth of these activists is nothing to shake your fist at - they are working hard to change their community, country and world!

You know that Inspi(red) campaign to help AIDS? Well, I have always felt that really - the campgin should be Inspi(green). Okay, I admit... it's definitely not as catchy, but that's what should inspire people. The natural things around you are where you came from, and continues to support life on this planet. That should inspire you.  These activists from India should inspire you. They have done it for me. Keep on the look out for Inspi(green) bags at a store near you! All proceeds will go back to the earth. 

My point is, not all of us have what it takes to be arrested. That is okay! But that doesn't mean we can't change ourselves and the world around us. So, take action, talk to someone about what you believe and stand up for it! The planet needs you!

When I think of the victims of global warming, my mind leaps to Pacific Island nations: places that are disappearing off the maps as rising seas swallow people's homes and cultures. One of our ships, the Esperanza, was collecting some of those Pacific Island stories last month. But it was an island in the Atlantic Ocean that played host to the most recent action in our global warming campaign.

Right now, President Obama is vacationing with his family on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, a summer tourist destination off the coast of Massachusetts.

While the Vineyard isn’t disappearing quite as rapidly as the places the Esperanza has visited lately, it faces dire consequences if we continue burning the oil and coal responsible for global warming.

Just a few feet of sea level rise will wreak havoc on the island’s tourism industry, not to mention the few thousand residents who call the place home year-round.

So when we found out that the president – the one person with the most power to save this and every other island around the world from global warming – was visiting, we knew we had to send him a message.

Yesterday, a dozen Greenpeace volunteers from Massachusetts stepped off the ferry on to the Vineyard, armed with several thousand copies of a spoof newspaper we produced: “The Martha’s Vineyard Future Times.”

At a glance, the paper looked like the popular Martha’s Vineyard Times newspaper, but our edition was dated to August 27th, 2020. On the front page, it told the story of what Martha’s Vineyard could look like if President Obama embraces the clean energy revolution we need. Majestic wind turbines off the shore spin cheap, clean energy into the Vineyard’s homes and businesses. The local economy is buoyed by green jobs. People around the world honor the president for his political courage for standing up to special interests.

On the back page, we see the grim consequences of inaction. Hurricanes barrel toward the Vineyard. Local governments hurry to prepare evacuation plans. Of course, we couldn’t avoid a dig or two at the posh tourists who summer at the island, with ads for sandbags and evacuation boats from Gucci and DKNY.

When tourists and residents received the newspapers from our activists, quizzical looks often gave way to a laugh or a “thank you” for helping to spread the word. Ashley and Emily, two teens who grew up on the island, said that of course they were worried about climate change. If sea levels rise, “we’re basically screwed,” they told us.

To drive the point about sea level rise home, we had one more trick up our sleeves: an underwater protest. We created a pair of hands that mysteriously emerged from the water at the island’s main harbor, holding a sign imploring the president to “Stop Global Warming – Or We’re All Sunk!”

Our underwater protestor drew laughs and smiles, and hopefully provoked some thought about what sea level rise will mean for Martha’s Vineyard and islands all around the world.

I genuinely hope the president had a restful week on the Vineyard – I also hope he took a moment or two to consider what global warming will mean for his new summer home, and for the billions of people around the world who will suffer if the United States does not lead at the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen that are now 100 days away.

President Obama’s press secretary said yesterday that he has loved his time on the Vineyard, and that he will be back to vacation there again. If he wants to have that opportunity, he needs to go back to D.C., listen to the world’s best climate scientists, and take the courageous steps we need to stop global warming.

I am SO HAPPY about this:

President Obama should listen to Granny Sarah - take action to let him know you feel the same! Push for Solar Solutions! Yes we can! Stop letting false solutions like "clean" coal, natural gas and nuclear power get airtime - dedicate your messaging to the possibilities of renewable energy! The time is now! Yes we can stop global warming! :o) 

PS - And yes, she is top notch in my book because she spells her name with and 'H' too! 

During the school year, we have our "Fun Friday" afternoons.  We open the many letters we receive from school groups, tape up our favorite pictures, and send back brochures, book marks, and personalized letters.  We truly enjoy reading about the many ways classes make a difference in their schools and their creative fundraising initiatives.  During one staff meeting, we even broadcast a homemade video which a school group showed in their community as a fundraiser!

Now that the school year is starting up again, here are some ideas if you or your classmates want to get involved but aren't quite sure how:

As an academic project, one group tackled global warming as a four part project including a written report, a photo report, a display board, and an action point.  For their action point, they chose to raffle off three themed baskets with gift cards.  The raffle tickets were sold at their class exhibition and then donated.

Student led environmental groups have set-up donation tables with materials we've provided covering deforestation, oceans, and toxics.  A high school group chose toxic electronics, which includes video games(!), as their fundraising topic because of its relevance to their everyday lives.

One determined club made hand-sewn canvas totes to promote reusable bags and sold their totes during the school's Earth Day festivities.  They donated the proceeds raised from selling their totes to classmates, staff, and community members.

Classes have organized weekend walk-a-thons, yard sales, and recycling drives in their communities to raise awareness and fully understand how they can go green in their own lives. 

If your school doesn't have an Environmental Club, you should start one with the help of a teacher and classmates!  Clubs are a great way to tell your fellow students about the importance of recycling, using reusable bags and water bottles, and turning off lights and electronics when leaving the classroom.  As your club grows, you can get involved in or organize school-wide volunteer opportunities, pressure your administration to make environmentally wise purchases for the classroom, and your classmates to be responsible!

We love to hear what projects you and your friends take on at school and at home!  Send us your drawings, photos, and information requests to the below DC address and we'll try our best to get a package out to you!

The flames that recently engulfed the suburbs of Athens and several Greek islands in the Aegean Sea are finally dying down.  Nearly 52,000 acres of forest have been destroyed but, miraculously, no one has died.

The news of this summer’s devastating Greek forest fires drew my mind back to a summer two years ago.  In August of 2007, my Yiayia called me and told me sadly, “Kaiyete y Ellada” – Greece is burning.

That summer, Greece experienced one of the worst environmental disasters of the year.  Over 3,000 fires blazed across the country destroying 670,000 acres of ancient forests, olive groves, and farm land; ruining more than 2,000 homes and other buildings; and taking the lives of 84 men, women, and children.  Historic sites like Ancient Olympia experienced irreparable damage.

The intensity of the fires was largely attributed to three consecutive and unprecedented 105’C heat waves that struck the country and caused severe drought.

Dramatically intensifying summer fires, super-charged hurricanes, disappearing coastlines, and wide-spread famine and disease are what await us if we do not take immediate action to halt the rapidly warming global climate.

Our last chance to prevent runaway climate change will be at this December’s U.N. Climate Convention in Copenhagen.  But, as the world’s leaders prepare to hammer out a new international climate treaty, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a weak and ineffective global warming bill.

The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that, in order to avoid the worst impacts of global warming, the U.S. and other industrialized countries must cut their emissions 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020.  The House of Representatives’ bill only calls for a 4% reduction by 2020 and gives billions of dollars to coal-fired power plants – the single largest source of global warming pollution in the U.S.  

Now is not the time for complacency. The raging forest fires that we are witnessing in Greece, Spain, Australia, and southern California will only be the beginning if we do not pass serious legislation to stop corporations from pumping CO2 into our atmosphere.  Unless the new climate bill is strengthened in the Senate, the United States will enter the U.N. Climate Convention without a strong commitment to fight global warming. 

It is up to President Obama to get us back to the science-based targets he promised in his inaugural address and become a world leader in the battle against global warming.  Otherwise, we all will face a future in flames.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE ACTION.  Tell President Obama to be a world leader against global warming.  America honors leaders, not politicians. 

I was listening to Bill Maher last week and something he said about global warming that had me scratching my head. “And when it comes to 'bad for the environment,' nothing compares with the business of raising animals for food, which causes about 40% more global warming than all the cars and planes combined. If you care about the planet, it's actually better to eat a salad in a Hummer than a cheeseburger in a Prius.”

Then, I stumbled upon this Greenpeace video that gives a pretty good breakdown of why meat has such a large carbon footprint.



As someone who cares about the environment, you are probably searching for things you can do to help protect it. And, here is one more way you can make your life a little greener.

--Michelle 

It has now been almost three months since the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) took on the serious issue of chinook (king) salmon by catch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery. The result of the vote on a motion made by the State of Alaska, Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), is misguided. As it happens, this is one of the last decisions made by our former Governor Sarah Palin before she left office. The problem is the pollock fishery in the Bering Sea is a one billion dollar a year fishery. While they are fishing for pollock, dragging huge nets behind their factory ships, they also catch other fish other than pollock.

In this case, they catch chinook salmon, many of which are heading for Western Alaska rivers and streams, as by catch. Between 1990-2001, an average of 37,819 chinook salmon and 69,332 other salmon were caught annually in the Bering Sea pollock fishery. Governor Palin's motion said the pollock industry should be allowed to catch up to 68,000 chinook which was later lowered to 60,000 fish per year. This amount is almost double the eleven year average cited above! You can get more information about this serious problem by Googling the NPFMC if you wish. What I am wondering in this short paper is given there are representatives from the States of Washington and Oregon, as well as others, on the NPFMC, and given that most of the pollock fishing companies are from Washington, why would the State of Alaska make such a motion which negatively impacts the Citizens of the State she is supposed to represent? And make a motion that would increase the chinook salmon by catch amount to almost twice the amount of what was caught in this fishery, from a eleven year average of 37,819 to 60,000 fish?

We should make no mistake that the elected government officials of our State must do all they can to represent the people, all the people of our State. And those who are appointed to important positions, representing our elected government officials, must also do the same. We are requesting a review of this motion, passed by the NPFMC unanimously, by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, a very popular former Governor of the State of Washington, where many of these pollock fishers reside, so that the needs of the people of Alaska can be fairly represented and that a lower number of chinook salmon by catch can be put into place. We hope that the Secretary will take a serious look at this most serious problem. Just this summer alone, many of our people have been denied keeping a chinook salmon when caught for subsistence use.

Recently some of our people in Western Alaska went ahead and fished for salmon for food against an ADF&G closure in their waters. The elected officials of our State are to do all that they can to represent all the Citizens of the State of Alaska and not the interests of large fishing companies from other parts of our Country. It seems our former Governor has done exactly the opposite. No doubt the pollock fishers need to work and provide for their families. So do our people in Alaska. Now the NPFMC will be taking on the issue of Chum salmon by catch in the next few months. Lets hope our elected people will do all they can to represent Alaska and the Citizens who are dependent upon these fish to feed our families. After all we elected them to do just that!

This weekend I stopped in my "neighborhood" Trader Joe's to escape the hot, humid weather and do a little investigating. Are they really selling seafood that they shouldn't? And, if so, how much? I was pumped with caffeine, armed with my camera phone and ready to find some answers.

The store was small, but there were seafood products in almost every aisle. The frozen section, canned goods, pre-packaged meals in the produce aisle and end-caps.  It didn’t take me very long to find seafood that was less-than-sustainable. In my scouring I netted lots of seafood that Greenpeace has on their red list. I easily hooked swordfish, yellowfin tuna, tropical shrimp, Atlantic salmon, cod, halibut and albacore tuna.

As I prowled the aisles searching for more red list seafood a strange announcement came over the intercom, “Would Mary please report to the captain’s desk?” What? Where was I, a grocery store or a marina? I admit Trader Joe’s has a fun décor and theme, but the fun stopped once I learned Trader Joe’s is harming the oceans by stocking their stores full of seafood that is helping to destroy the oceans.

What is Trader Joe’s thinking? They have organic produce. I didn’t see any plastic bags. Do they have a secret evil side to them that hates the oceans? Were they unaware that their seafood harms the environment?

Then, the sad truth dawned on me -- like everything in this world, it’s all about the bottom line. Trader Joe’s can buy unsustainable seafood cheaply and sell it to all of us without sharing the dirty details. And, unless we make a big stink about it, they will continue to do so.

Trader Joe shoppers want a good bargain, of course, but they also want to feel good about their purchases. That’s why Trader Joe’s spends so much money on fun in-store signs, web marketing and newsletters. They proclaim they are green and doing their part to help our planet. But, they aren’t doing enough.  

The pressure all of us have been applying is working. Trader Joe posted a note on their website stating, “As we’ve often mentioned, we listen to our customers. Hearing recent feedback, our goal is to offer seafood options that fit customer needs ranging from food safety and taste, to concern over the environment.”

But, they are still selling tons of red list seafood. And so, we need to keep the pressure up. Here are four quick things you can do to help. You’ll feel good after you do, of that, I’m sure!

• Call Trader Joe's and tell them to stop selling seafood that isn’t sustainable!

• When you are in the store shopping, find some red list seafood, bring it to a manger and ask them to stop selling the items in their stores. Here are some tips >>

• Follow Greenpeace and Traitor Joe on Twitter.

• Fan Traitor Joe on Facebook.

--Michelle

Today is August 22. We are mid-way through leg 2 of this Arctic Climate Impacts Expedition in Sermilik Fjord. We have been wildly busy since arriving in Tasiilaq on August 17, but things are going really, really well. We’ve been incredibly lucky: none of the problems that could have thrown a wrench in to our well laid plans - fog grounding the helicopter, heavy ice impeding the ship’s transit, scientific equipment breaking down – have happened. I chalk this up to “the luck of the Irish” since four of our crew are Irish - the chief engineer, media officer, helicopter pilot and videographer.

Since things are going so smoothly, I’m taking a few moments out of my busy day and have taken my laptop up to the bridge to churn out a blog. Here’s a bit of a running description of what’s going on from my vantage point.

The helicopter is about to take off to take a TV crew back to Tasillaq after they spent the night on the ship. The helicopter will pick up another TV crew in Tasiilaq, and bring them to the ship for their night on board. It’s 9am now and this is the helicopter’s third flight. The helicopter first started flying at 5:30am to take a team of glaciologists to Helheim Glacier to retrieve GPS units that are recording the glacier’s flow speed (an indicator of its melt rate, and in turn, the pace and intensity of global warming here in Greenland).

Off on the starboard side of the ship a team of oceanographers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, led by Dr. Fiamma Straneo, are conducting “CTD casts.” “CTD” stands for “conductivity, temperature, depth,” three indicators in the deep waters of Sermilik Fjord that will help them to understand the complex dynamics of currents and how they deliver warm water to Helheim Glacier at the head of the fjord. The CTD cast is done with a device that is lowered through the water column on a metal line, using a winch that’s been welded to the deck just for this purpose. The fjords here in Greenland are very deep, and the CTD casts often go to depths of 2,300 feet. As one of the oceanographers described it, Sermilik Fjord is like a submerged Grand Canyon.


Here on the bridge, Captain Pete is trying to maneuver the ship through waters that are completely covered by ice at the surface. Huge icebergs float amongst the smaller pieces of ice, and as the ship moves through the ice, it sounds like a huge gin and tonic (Ok, Pete says it is more like a frozen daiquiri, but I maintain the gin and tonic comparison). He can take the ship through the smaller pieces of ice, the ship shoves them aside, but it’s impossible to shove or move the larger icebergs. When I went to grab my laptop out of my cabin I looked outside the porthole and just a few feet away was a solid wall of ice, the port side of the ship was sitting next to an iceberg that measured about 50 high. And that’s a small iceberg. We’ve seen icebergs that are so huge that they look like tremendous walls of ice, or small glaciers themselves. It’s unreal.

Because there is so much ice in the fjord, moving the ship is very slow going. The CTD casts are conducted in lines across the fjord in order to get a picture of water currents and movement. The ship is trying to follow straight lines across the fjord that are drawn on the chart, but in reality, it’s impossible to follow them due to all of the giant icebergs in the water. The ship’s actual course is a zigzag on the chart, not a straight line.

It is crazy beautiful here. After close to two months without sunrises and sunsets, it’s nice to be at a latitude where we can enjoy them again. We have been very lucky with the weather and the skies have been clear, so when the sun sets at night it casts a pink and orange glow on the ice in the fjord. Two nights ago we saw some faint northern lights that was also a treat.

After today we have three more days in Sermilik Fjord before departing Tasiilaq at the end of the day on August 25 and heading north toward Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier, and then on to 79 Glacier even further north up the east coast of Greenland. This period in Sermilik Glacier is our busiest, most hectic time on the entire three-month expedition, and so far it is going swimmingly well, better than I ever expected. The factors that guarantee a successful expedition in the Arctic are a good crew, and lots of luck. We’ve got an amazing team on board, even after almost three months on board together everyone is working hard and doing great work. All we need is for our “luck of the Irish” to continue to hold.

The last few weeks of summer are finally here and for many students that means sleeping in as much as possible, final visits with hometown friends and earning some last minute savings before heading back to school. But as enticing as the final lazy days of summer are, some students decided to dedicate their last week to developing their leadership skills and preparing for an active semester.

On Thursday, August 13th, 70 young activists from across the US and Canada arrived in Algonquin, Illinois for Activist Camp, a 4-day summer training program hosted by Greenpeace and Forest Ethics. Activist Camp provided an opportunity for these activists to develop their grassroots organizing skills, discuss Greenpeace and Forest Ethics campaigns in depth, network and have fun.

There were a variety of trainings offered throughout the weekend including coalition building, advanced media, creative activism, recruitment and banner making. All of the trainings provided the young activists with skills that will be beneficial to working on a Greenpeace or Forest Ethics campaign on their campus or in their community.

“At Activist Camp I learned how to train trainers. I can now go back to my campus and build the capacity of my club by sharing the skills I learned with students at my school,” said Tina Robinson of Penn State University.

With a new set of skills, these Greenpeace students will be returning to their respective campuses to continue to tackle the issue of global warming and build the youth climate movement.

An Activist Camp participant, Rachel O’Connor, has already been recognized in her hometown for her demonstrated leadership.

Want to get involved? The Greenpeace Student Network is seeking student activists that are eager to lead the clean energy fight on their campus. If you’re dedicated and passionate about tackling top environmental issues then apply to be a Greenpeace campus coordinator at your school.

There's been a lot of chatter about the American Petroleum Institute's astroturf campaign to oppose climate legislation ever since the story first broke. Of course, plenty of conservatives, global warming deniers, and representatives for Big Oil have tried to defend the astroturf campaign, claiming that they are just helping facilitate legitimate grassroots activity by scheduling a series of rallies in cities where Big Oil has a strong presence.

But according to Public Citizen folks who managed to get into the campaign's kickoff event in Houston earlier this week, the word "rally" doesn't even come close to describing what's going on here. It's more like a "company picnic," according to citizensarah of Public Citizen.

Check it out:

Though the Netroots has gotten the message loud and clear: these are really just company picnics, not uprisings of real grassroots support, there has still been some hedging on the part of the traditional media — who is still reporting that “many of the people attending the demonstration were employees of oil companies who work in Houston and were bused from their workplaces.“

But the truth is that the Houston rally was attended ONLY by energy company employees and retirees (at least that’s the way they wanted it). It’s no big surprise that a few rabble-rousing enviros were kicked out, but when even those that oppose cap and trade were turned away — that should raise major red flags about the true nature of these events. This isn’t even Astroturf anymore, this is asphalt.

But don’t take my word for it, listen to the anti-cap and trade folks from Freedom Works that were [excluded] from yesterday’s rally:

When you've got funding from giant multinational corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP, and you aren't even allowing the general public to attend your events — even when they agree with you, for crying out loud! — then there really is nothing legitimately grassroots about your campaign. Sorry.

If you too are fed up with the deceitful and manipulative tactics employed by Big Oil and want to see a real, intelligent debate about climate policy take place in this country, write to Big Oil now and tell them to stop the lies.

Watch Greenpeace Research Director Kert Davies on Democracy Now. Kert explains how the leaked memo reveals that the American Petroleum Institute is asking oil companies to recruit employees, retirees, and contractors to take part in rallies against climate change legislation.

Watch now >>

Today in Kogelo, Kenya, local activists worked with Greenpeace's Solar Generation to install solar panels on the Senator Barack Obama School as well as the house of Mama Sara, President Obama's grandmother.

"I am very pleased that my home has been improved thanks to solar energy and I'll make sure my grandson hears about it," Mama Sara said. Let's hope President Obama not only hears about it, but is so moved by the benefits that solar energy has in store for his grandmother’s community that he takes the action necessary to kickstart a global energy revolution!


Created with flickr slideshow.

The solar installations are part of a renewable energy workshop hosted by Solar Generation. The Kibera Community Youth Programme and members of Nyang’oma Kogelo participated.

Like many other countries in Africa, Kenya is on the front lines of climate change impacts. A drastic reduction in rainfall in recent years has brought on a drought that has worsened the country’s preexisting agricultural problems caused by poor land use and desertification. The drought has also made Kenya’s large-scale hydro power generators unreliable.

All of which makes solar energy an especially good investment for Kenyans. Solar installations strengthen the economy and protect the environment while ensuring a reliable and clean supply of energy for a part of the world where paraffin oil – which, when burned, releases toxins and carcinogens – is still in widespread use.

The solar industry is ready and able to deliver the needed capacity. There is no technical impediment to powering Kenya with clean, green solar power, just political barriers.

Industrialized countries are largely responsible for the climate crisis, and it’s time we took responsibility for that. The developed world should be helping developing countries like Kenya leapfrog the dirty fossil fuels of the past while giving them access to the clean energies of the future with which to continue their economic development. Greenpeace is calling for rich countries to contribute $140 billion annually to support climate adaptation, mitigation, and forest protection in the developing world.

With just 15 weeks left to go until the decisive UN climate talks in Copenhagen, we are urging world leaders to emulate the innovative young people of Kibera and Kogelo and translate their climate rhetoric into action in Copenhagen.

The Arctic Sunrise is currently in transit from the west to the east coast of Greenland. We said goodbye to the on-board science team in Nugatsiaq on August 9, and to two Chinese journalists and a campaigner from Greenpeace China in Sisimiut on August 11. Our next port-of-call is Tasiilaq on the southeast coast of Greenland.

You can follow our Arctic Expedition tour on this handy Google map:


View Arctic Tour in a larger map

An independent science team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachussetts will join the ship in Tasiilaq. The team, led by Dr. Fiamma Stranneo, will undertake a variety of oceanographic measurements in Sermilik Fjord, just east of Tasiilaq, from August 19-25. Their goal is to determine if warm, sub-tropical waters are coming into contact with glaciers in the fjord, and to determine the processes that control the variability of ocean conditions where the glaciers meet the sea.

Why is this important? The IPCC’s estimates for sea level rise by the end of this century contain very little contribution from the melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica because the dynamics of the melt are so poorly understood. As scientists conduct research and begin to unravel the complicated dynamics that govern and influence the melt of the enormous ice sheets at opposite ends of the planet, their predictions for the rate of sea level rise increase. The IPCC’s 2007 estimate for sea level rise by 2100 is 20-60cm (8-24 inches). Since then, scientists have predicted sea levels will actually rise one to two meters (3.3 to 6.6 feet). That’s a significant jump in just two years’ time, particularly since so many of the dynamic forces that affect ice sheet melt and flow rate are not yet understood.


The Arctic sunrise is pictured here amidst cracked and drifting ice in front of the Petermann glacier (out of shot to the left). This is the zone where the glacier's front meets the sea and starts to break up. This is the furthest point that the ship can get to the front of the glacier to begin research via helicopter, inflatable and perhaps by foot/skis. © Nick Cobbing/Greenpeace

Dr. Stranneo’s science program in Sermilik Fjord is well-organized and very ambitious, so we are prepared to support her team’s research around the clock, 24/7 if need be. However, scientific research is not the only activity that will be underway in Sermilik Fjord. Although it’s pretty remote, Tasiilaq is relatively easy to reach by air from Iceland and Denmark, so we are able to host a number of VIPs and journalists from around the world while the research is taking place in Sermilik Fjord. This is the one leg of our expedition where a VIP or journalist can join the ship for just a night or two. As a result, we will be hosting a crew from CNN, three German TV crews, one French TV crew, and one Indian TV crew. The ship can only accommodate so many people per night, so additional news crews (AP print and TV, a French newspaper, The Economist) and a Spanish politician will stay in Tasiilaq and be ferried out to the ship for the day.

All told, we’ll have about 20 people cycling on and off the ship as overnight guests, and another ten or so as guests during the day. This may not sound like a lot, but trust me, it is. Each person and their gear must be transported to the ship via a small boat or the helicopter. Ice in the fjord may scuttle our plans to use small boats, and fog (very common in these parts) will keep the helicopter grounded. Every person who joins the ship, even if it’s just for one night, will need to be briefed on safety protocols as well as ship do’s and don’ts. But most importantly, our goal is to provide each guest with a firsthand account and explanation of the work that Dr. Stranneo and her team are conducting, as well as background information on how it relates to the upcoming climate negotiations in December. We want them to leave the ship understanding the urgent need for deep, mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to increase the chance that the message gets to heads of state who are going to be negotiating a climate treaty in Copenhagen this December.

The media are an important avenue for getting our message out into the general public. Greenpeace puts its money into its campaigns; we simply can’t afford to spend billions of dollars on advertising to get our message out (unlike Big Oil and its allies, who have spent $82 million already this year lobbying against climate legislation). We rely on a variety of other tactics – from our website to public speaking to newsletters and talking to people on the street. Our tactics may be numerous, but media coverage is a great way to get our message out to many people – including politicians – in one fell swoop. So we are very excited to be hosting so many top-notch journalists during our time in Tasiilaq.

We have a couple of days of “calm” left before the managed chaos that will ensue in Tasiilaq. I for one am looking forward to it. It will be challenging, hard work, but in the end, the rewards will be measurable.

And it’s always a treat to see someone’s face when they come aboard a Greenpeace ship for the first time. I'll have more updates for you soon, so check back!

Things can get pretty serious around the office here at Greenpeace, what with the whale killing, forest destruction, corporate polluting and all.  How do we unwind? Many of us here have thrown our hearts and souls into the summer softball season.  On the national mall at the base of the Washington Monument, we started the season a rag tag group of hippies, (don’t get me wrong, most of us wear shoes most of the time) and finished the regular season with a record of 3-5, two of those wins forfeits.  We had a rough start.

Something changed though during the playoffs.  Maybe it was momentum gained from a big win for Greenpeace on the Kimberly Clark campaign in early August.  Maybe it was the spirit of George Washington touching us all from that great stone obelisk in the shadow of which we play each Wednesday.  I suspect that if he weren’t so busy fathering our country, he would have been an avid sports enthusiast.  Somehow, against regular season odds, we made it to the championship game of the playoffs.  Pitted against Newt Gingrich’s “Newtralizers,” we had no choice but to win.  It is hard to accept something like this as a simple physical contest.  It was bigger than that for most of us, a manifestation of the ideological odds at which our teams stand.  So, from the depths of our do-gooder souls, we mustered all of our might and beat the Newts 17-10 for the National Capitol Softbal Association championship title.  Thom Kay's poignant reaction, “God it feels good to be a gangsta.”  Indeed it does, Thom!                             

 

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Woodstock (Aug. 15 to 18), Treehugger.com has been running a series of articles about the spirit of protest born in the 60s and how it has shaped activism today. I wrote a brief history for them about the role rock musicians have played in Greenpeace activism over the years, starting with the benefit concert by Joni Mitchell and James Taylor that started it all, up to today when Anti-Flag is helping us organize young punk rockers at the Warped Tour.

One thing I didn't touch on in the piece that came up in my research, which I think is really awesome, is that Allen Ginsberg was an "early advisor and mentor" to Greenpeace. I'm a big fan of Ginsberg's poetry, so it made me pretty proud to find this out, and I thought I'd share this picture of Ginsberg reading "Plutonian Ode" at a disarmament rally back in the 70s.

I'd also like to give a little plug to the fantastic book in which I found much of the info for the Treehugger piece as well as both pics you see here on this post. It's by Rex Weyler, a journalist and one of the first Greenpeace activists, and it's called Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists, and Visionaries Changed the World.

Here's a little taste of the many photos awaiting you on the Treehugger post. This is my personal favorite: Jerry Garcia playing to a sold-out crowd at a Greenpeace benefit concert right here in San Francisco, on Pier 31, in front of the Greenpeace ship James Bay:



The story of how this benefit concert featuring the Jerry Garcia Band came about and was pulled off in just five days is pretty fascinating. You can get a bit of it from my Treehugger post, but you'll have to pick up Rex Weyler's book to read the whole thing!

Photos © Rex Weyler

This morning, several Greenpeace activists laid down some astroturf (the real kind) in front of the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the American Petroleum Institute (API), and erected a sign that read "CLIMATE FRAUD, FUNDED BY BIG OIL." The sign and astroturf were also accompanied by the logos of oil giants ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron, all of which are members of API.



The action was meant to protest the US oil industry’s plans to have oil company employees attend anti-US climate action rallies while masquerading as concerned “Energy Citizens.” This Energy Citizens campaign is an attempt to use a tactic known as “astroturfing,” in which they give the appearance of a genuine grassroots movement while hiding the fact that it is actually a well-funded effort coordinated by large multinational corporations with a vested interest in preventing any new regulations of their dirty energy business.

The astroturf got laid pretty thick today in my hometown, Houston, where the first Energy Citizens rally occurred (showing just how non-grassroots this campaign is, Chevron apparently bussed many of its employees to the event).

The API memo (available here, along with Greenpeace's response to API), leaked to colleagues of mine here at Greenpeace last week, called on the CEOs of some of the world’s biggest oil companies to “indicate to your company leadership your strong support for employee participation in the rallies.” The API’s President, Jack Gerard, further warns the world’s oil barons to treat the memo as “sensitive,” arguing that “we don’t want our critics to know our game plan.”

Had it not been for the leaked memo, these Energy Citizens events might have been just another of Big Oil’s dirty tricks intended to thwart real public debate on global warming policy. But by recognizing what we’re up against and mobilizing a response, we can ensure that the debate about how best to kickstart a clean energy revolution is not sullied by purveyors of dirty energy.

The concern here absolutely needs to be what’s best for the environment, not what’s best for the oil industry’s bottom line. Global warming is the most pressing environmental crisis of our time. But that doesn’t phase Big Oil, or many other dirty energy providers, for that matter. So far this year, over  $82 million has been spent on corporate lobbyists to argue against climate change legislation, not only by Big Oil, but also by King Coal and gas companies across the US.

Whether you support the Waxman-Markey legislation or not, it is imperative that you get involved, get vocal, and be part of the real grassroots movement calling for science-based policies to deal with the severity of the climate crisis. Let’s make sure Big Oil’s employees are offered new employment opportunities as part of a green energy revolution so that they no longer have to fear for their job if they refuse to attend some bogus “Energy Citizen” rally.