Greenpeace

This Reuters article, published yesterday, does a great job of laying out the progress we’ve made so far in stopping deforestation in the Amazon thanks to our report, “Slaughtering the Amazon.”

SAO PAULO/RIO DE JANEIRO, June 29 (Reuters) - In a victory for conservationists, Brazil's huge cattle industry is bending to demands to curb destruction of the Amazon forest after heavy criticism of its leading role in deforestation.

Reforms by Brazil's big slaughterhouses could move the industry toward increased productivity and away from the practice of burning trees to clear land in the world's largest rainforest, industry officials and conservationists say.

…

In the past month, since the release of a 40-page Greenpeace report detailing links between Brazil's meatpackers and deforestation, the World Bank has withdrawn a $90 million loan to one firm. And supermarket chains said they would stop buying beef from 11 producers in the Amazon state of Para.

Big beef firms announced steps to ensure their cattle come from legal ranches. Beef exporters pledged not to accept meat from illegally deforested areas and to set up an electronic tracing system to guarantee the animals' origin.

"There have been very good decisions," said Andre Muggiati of Greenpeace, whose report used satellite data to show that beef for Brazil's domestic market and exports often comes from farms with recent deforestation.

"Now it is about implementation of deals. You have to monitor these commitments. If not, you lose it."

Like my colleague Andre says, making a commitment and following through on that commitment are two different things. We’ll be monitoring the situation in the Amazon closely to ensure that those companies who have committed to making changes actually follow through.

We’re still waiting to hear back from several of the shoe companies named in the report as to what they plan to do to make sure that the leather in their shoes is not coming from Amazon destruction. If you haven’t taken action yet, write to Nike, Adidas, Timberland, Geox, and Clarks right now and tell them to support solutions to deforestation and global warming. And if you’ve read any of the PR spin these companies have put out in the wake of our report release, you can read our responses here.

Grocery shopping. It's a weekly chore that I dread. I have to try and remember my list, coupons, the weekly store flyer and my canvas bags.

Greenpeace is pressuring supermarkets so we can have one less thing to worry about when we go to the grocery store–whether or not the seafood is sustainable. We all have enough to remember, so it’s time for supermarkets to ensure that all their seafood has been caught in a sustainable way and the fish have descriptive labels so we can make informed decisions when we are at the seafood counter.

Greenpeace wants the entire seafood industry to change. Seafood businesses have a responsibility to make sure that the seafood they are selling is sustainable, so that we will be able to enjoy seafood without wondering if our purchases are contributing to the collapse of our ocean ecosystems.



Greenpeace released an updated scorecard. In their third release some supermarkets did better and I’m excited that the stores are listening to their customers and making positive changes. But, other supermarkets continue to do poorly.

In the third scorecard release, Wegmans received top ranking followed by Ahold USA, while Whole Foods dropped to third place from its December 2008 first place ranking. Trader Joe’s remains ranked at # 17, the worst ranking of the national supermarket chains surveyed. Three regional chains ranked at the bottom.

Wonder how your favorite supermarket ranked? Find out now. Greenpeace put together an interactive map. All you have to do is pick your state and a list of grocery stores will be displayed. You can see if your grocery store passed, failed or fell somewhere in the middle.

That's why we're here—to get the companies to make the right decisions.

We spent the last week patrolling the waters of the Mediterranean for illegal driftnetters.  The good news is that for the first time, we didn't find any.  (No pirates is good pirates!) Weather was probably a factor, as it was often a bit rough for them to be able to operate.  There's also the Greenpeace Factor - word gets around that we are out looking, so pirate fishermen know their chances of getting away with it are pretty slim - they may just decide not to go fishing. 

While these were undoubtedly part of the reason why we didn't come across any illegal driftnetters in a week of searching, an even better explanation is that the increased controls we have fought for and won in recent years are starting to take effect.  Even Italy, which appeared ready to flaunt the drift net ban, reversed their position the day our search began.

This echoed our findings from the previous week, where for the first time in years we encountered no blatantly illegal bluefin fishing.  We did see military ships inspecting fishing boats, even sending divers down to look at tuna cages. 

There are still some loopholes in the regulations that enable people to cheat.  However, Raul Romeva, a member of the European Parliament Fisheries Committee, was on board with us to see firsthand what is going on.  Romeva has been instrumental in writing many of the recent regulations, so I have a feeling he will be able to use what he learned at sea with us to close some of these loopholes.  Better still, it sounds like he is becoming a champion for marine reserves.

Looking ahead, it is clear that controlling illegal fishing alone will not be enough to protect the Mediterranean, or to prevent the collapse of bluefin tuna.  The LEGAL catch, as set by ICCAT, the organization that has failed to listen even to the advice of its own scientists, is high enough to seal the bluefin's fate.

There is still time to turn things around.  First, we need Monaco, the US, and others to ban illegal trade in critically endangered bluefin until the population can recover.  This can happen next year, at the meeting of parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.  Then, we need countries throughout the region to work together to establish fully protected marine reserves.  Bluefin spawning areas are a good place to start – in the Med as well as the Gulf of Mexico.

I leave the ship in the morning.  I’m going to miss everyone on board, but I made some new friends that I know I’ll keep in touch with for a long time to come.  I’ll also miss the ship, and this big blue sea, but it makes it easier knowing that the Rainbow Warrior will be defending the Mediterranean long after I'm gone.  

For the Oceans - 

John Hocevar and the team aboard the Rainbow Warrior

We've been skeptical of BP's green marketing claims all along, but reports out of London today confirm that BP's new motto should be "Back to Petroleum".

The Guardian reports:

 

BP  has shut down its alternative energy headquarters in London, accepted the resignation of its clean energy boss and imposed budget cuts...

....BP Alternative Energy was given its own headquarters in County Hall opposite the Houses of Parliament two years ago and its managing director, Vivienne Cox, oversaw a small division of 80 staff concentrating on wind and solar power. But [Cox] – BP's most senior female executive, who previously ran renewables as part of a larger gas and power division now dismantled by Hayward – is standing down tomorrow.

This comes alongside huge cuts in the alternative energy budget – from $1.4bn (£850m) last year to between $500m and $1bn this year, although spending is still roughly in line with original plans to invest $8bn by 2015.

Earlier this year the company shut down solar operations in the US and Spain.

Meanwhile, BP is still moving into more destructive oil operations, such as Canada's tar sands.

 

 

Our ship, The Arctic Sunrise is currently heading north along the west coast of Greenland in a race against time. It's destination is the disintegrating Petermann Glacier, but to reach the glacier our ship must pass through the Nares Strait, which could be flooded with dangerous sea ice at any moment.

Here is a blog from Dave, who is onboard the Arctic Sunrise...

On board we’re got a diverse, international crew, hailing from countries that include China, India, Australia, New Zealand, the Ukraine, the US, Canada, Cyprus, UK, Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands. Ice navigators, captains, engineers, cooks, filmmakers, ice climbers and climatologists.

Earlier, we left the port of Sisimiut behind us; our last stop for a while, on what will be a three-month Arctic expedition to bear witness to the accelerating impacts of climate change and conduct scientific research that will help us better understand its ongoing effects the Greenland ice sheet, and rising sea levels. We’ve already got glacier and climate expert Jason Box on board – he’s the first of several scientists we’ll be working with during this trip, which will reach way beyond the normal realms of scientific research

Our first destination is Peterman Glacier, one of Greenland’s largest and most northerly glaciers. A massive chunk of ice – some 87 square kilometres – larger than New York’s Manhattan Island, is due to crack off from the glacier in the coming weeks. We intend being there when it happens. First though, we have to sail through the Nares Strait -an audacious task in itself; if successful, the Arctic Sunrise will be one of the first ships to navigate the strait so early in the year - it's usually choked with sea ice.

After Petermann, we plan to head to Greenland’s east coast to research the effects of warm sub-tropical waters of the island’s glaciers. Finally, as the Arctic ice reaches its annual low point, the expedition will conduct scientific research in the melting pack ice north of the island of Svalbard. It’s a massive undertaking and most of us will be on board until the end of September.

 

 

President Obama vowed to “restore science to its rightful place” in his inagural address. And then earlier today he said, "Now is the time for us to lead…. We cannot be afraid of the future. And we must not be prisoners of the past."

The Waxman-Markey climate legislation, however, will not do what the science says is necessary to avert the worst effects of climate change. In fact, House Democrats have worked extensively with the coal industry to edit the bill, which has translated into weakened emissions targets and massive offsets, in addition to several other critical shortcomings. Instead of leaving coal in the past – as the dirtiest of fossil fuels, it certainly has no place in a sustainable future – the coal industry now stands to reap significant rewards from the American Climate and Energy Security Act as it’s currently written.

That is why Greenpeace opposes the bill in its current form. Read our statement here.

The President must deliver on his campaign pledge to set climate policy based on science, not politics. Without President Obama’s leadership, corporate polluters will continue to highjack this process and ensure that we continue business as usual rather than implement policies to combat climate change.

Here are some of the key shortcomings of the bill:

• The Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that to avoid the worst climate impacts, the United States and other industrialized countries must cut their emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020. The short-term target in this bill is only a 4% reduction by 2020.
• The already weak targets set by the bill are further undermined by 2 billion tons per year of allowable offsets. That number is so large that the amount of available offsets will exceed the actual pollution reductions required under the cap until at least 2026—meaning it will be more than a decade before polluters would have to make real cuts in their emissions.
• Coal -fired power plants are the single largest source of global warming pollution in the US. In order to tackle climate change, we need to begin phasing out coal immediately. Far from phasing-out coal plants, however, Waxman-Markey will spur the growth of a new generation of coal-fired plants, locking in this dirty energy source for decades to come and sinking tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into the myth of carbon capture and sequestration – an untested, and unproven technology that is decades away from full-scale deployment even by the most optimistic estimates.
• Worst of all, the Waxman-Markey bill will actually remove the President’s existing authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act—authority recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court. At a time when we need should be pursuing every available means to stop global warming, Congress should not be throwing one of the most powerful tools at the President’s disposal.

We are calling on President Obama to move beyond rhetoric and deliver on his commitments to “restore science to its rightful place” and to lead the world in addressing climate change.

After a long campaign, the United Nations banned “wall of death” driftnets in 1992.  Stretching up to 50 miles, these floating nets were notoriously indiscriminate, snaring enormous amounts of marine life.  The Japanese squid fishery alone was estimated to take over 41 million non-target fish, sharks, sea birds, marine mammals and sea turtles each year.  Following the UN’s ban on high seas drift nets, the European Union reinforced the move by banning their use in EU waters, and the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas further extended the ban to the whole Mediterranean.

Unfortunately, several countries are not respecting the ban.  Italy is probably the worst offender, with a large fleet of driftnetters operating in the Sicilian Channel, Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas.  The Italian Government has taken some small steps to limit driftnetting, but in general they have chosen to look the other way.  We just got some good news, though.  After protests by Greenpeace and WWF, Italy just suspended their previous decree that Italian driftnetters would be allowed to operate up to 40 miles from the coast, which would have been in violation of international law.

 

Hard fought victories like the driftnet ban must be defended, so the Rainbow Warrior is patrolling the central Mediterranean to gather evidence on illegal activity, to be submitted to relevant authorities.  

The fishing season for bluefin tuna fishing has ended, and now the illegal driftnet season is in full swing.  Driftnetters target swordfish during their June/July spawning season, but the nets catch anything in their path – including bluefin. They operate at night, during the new moon, to make it difficult for fish to see the nets.  This is necessary because swordfish have highly developed eyes, aided by an exceptionally high density of blood vessels.  Swordfish are able to see far better in low light conditions than humans, to assist them in hunting for prey.

We are now in our target area, with what looks like a driftnet boat on our radar.  We’re going in for a closer look, and will continue to patrol throughout the night.  Our eyes may not work as well as swordfish, but hey, that’s why we’ve got binoculars.

For the oceans,

John Hocevar and the crew aboard the Rainbow Warrior

 

It took three Greenpeace staffers, two hand trucks, and a taxicab, but we did it.  On Tuesday, we delivered over 20,000 public comment cards to the Environmental Protection Agency, urging them to conduct an "endangerment finding" that would require the establishment of regulations for limiting the danger of anything that poses a threat — and right now, one of the biggest threats we're facing are greenhouse gas emissions and their effects on global warming.

In April, the EPA announced their conclusion that there is overwhelming evidence that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels endanger our health and welfare — which means that by law they have the ability to regulate those emissions.  As with many EPA rulings, there was a comment period as part of a process of public input which ended this week, on June 23.  This public comment period was the EPA’s next step in finalizing this proposed endangerment finding and deciding whether they'll regulate global warming pollution under the Clean Air Act… or whether the Administration will instead leave what the finding called “a serious problem now and for future generations” to Congress and their version of adequate climate legislation.

Over the course of 60 days since the release of their conclusion, the EPA announced that they would accept comments from the public on the endangerment finding — and Greenpeace staff, volunteers, students, and online activists sent in tens of thousands of comments supporting strong regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.  We gathered over 46,000 comments in total.  Volunteers in Ann Arbor, Michigan, stood out on street corners and in front of grocery stores, students in Manchester, Tennessee, attended street fairs and events like the 2009 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, and online activists from every corner of the country encouraged their family members and friends to submit a comment electronically.  It’s thanks to these everyday folks' hard work that people in their communities are now educated and have taken action in urging the Obama Administration to take the necessary measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions, protect public health, and avert the worst impacts of climate change.  (And it just goes to remind you that anybody can be an activist.)

So yesterday, when I went to the EPA with two of my colleagues and personally hand-delivered several boxes of handwritten comment cards to the Docket Center at the EPA, I asked a representative named "Assem" what the next steps for these cards will be.  He told me that the EPA will now be tasked to catalog and document each one of the comment cards we collected, and then they'll be put up on http://www.regulations.gov — the U.S. government's online portal that allows the public to find, review, and submit remarks on Federal documents that are open for comment.

But while it only took three Greenpeace staffers, two hand trucks, and a taxicab to deliver our comments to the EPA, it's gonna take all of us to make our comments heard loud and clear.  Join the Greenpeace Activist Network today, and help us help our planet.

While we were in Malta, Greenpeace activists were violently attacked when attempting to board two tuna vessels for inspection. Massimo Cappitta (more on him in a minute) was filmed punching Emma repeatedly in the face. Messages of support have been flooding in, with people offering well-wishes for Emma and also encouragement to keep up the fight.



Some, however, have questioned our methods. Why would we board a vessel without permission? A writer with Intrafish, a seafood trade outlet, urged readers not to be too quick to blame the fishermen. Others took the "two wrongs don't make a right" view, saying that trespassing was unjustified. In fact, this willingness to force the issue, to not take no for an answer, and, when necessary, to peacefully break the law, is part of what has made Greenpeace so effective over the years.

Time and time again, nonviolent direct action has played an important role in protecting the environment – and changing the world. From the Boston Tea Party to Gandhi's civil disobedience campaign, from the civil rights movement to Poland's Solidarity movement, peaceful resistance has often been what’s won the day. We boarded these vessels because illegal fishing is a serious threat to the survival of bluefin tuna.

The vessels may be privately owned, but the tuna are a public resource. Greenpeace has been instrumental in gathering information on illegal activity in the fishery for the last several years, sharing evidence with governments, which have then acted on our documentation. Further complicating the situation is the fact that the Maltese fisheries authorities are among the most corrupt in the world, so enforcement of the laws left in official hands is unlikely to happen at all. Massimo Cappitta is a Director of Mare Blue Tuna Farm, a business venture with bluefin tycoon Fuentes.

Here is his company's view on the environment, in their own words: www.mareblumalta.com/farm_environment.htm

I guess Cappitta prefers to speak with his fists.

It doesn't make the newspapers very often, but a large portion of Greenpeace's work involves providing technical reports and testimony at policy meetings, lobbying, grassroots organizing, scientific research, and collaboration with businesses. Sometimes, though, quiet diplomacy is not enough, and unsustainable or illegal activities must be confronted and exposed. Action of this nature often carries with it a certain amount of risk, as we saw this week.

Unfortunately for those who put their own greed above the health of our planet, that is a risk we are prepared to take.

For the Oceans,

John Hocevar and the crew aboard the Rainbow Warrior

"The Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Act of 2009” (H.R. 2868) was agreed to at 6:00 PM on June 23rd, by a vote of 18 to 11, with all Republicans voting no.

The good news is that after three days of voting the Homeland Security Committee rejected the most crippling amendments by Republicans on behalf of the chemical industry. These included proposals to delete entire sections of the bill that would require the use of safer chemical processes at the highest risk plants and allow citizens to take violators to court. The Committee also preserved requirements for all facilities to assess safer technologies, kept the inclusion of waste water facilities, worker participation in security plans and preserved states' authority to set stronger standards. In addition, they added grants for training first responders.

The bad news is that, before they voted against the entire bill, the Republicans won four amendments (aka loopholes) designed to delay or undermine requirements to use safer chemicals or processes. The four amendments are:

1. An amendment by Rep. Steve Austria (R-OH) that could exempt the highest risk plants in the country from implementing safer chemical processes if they meet the Small Business Administration definition of a “small business concern,” which the DHS will decide after a one year review. Rep. Jackson-Lee (D-TX) warned that 40% of U.S. chemical plants could qualify as a “small business concern” using the SBA definition.
2. An amendment by Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA) to delay the implementation of safer chemicals processes at any plant until the DHS conducts a “detailed analysis” of the costs of implementing safer chemical processes.
3. Another amendment by Rep. Dent (R-PA) that could exempt the highest risk chemical facilities from implementing safer chemical processes if they can show that switching to safer chemical processes would reduce their operations or workforce.
4. An amendment by Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) that would add a second appeals process allowing chemical facilities to challenge DHS findings that direct them to implement safer chemical processes.

Taken together these four amendments will give industry more excuses to resist using safer processes that are already protecting hundreds of communities.

The bill goes next to the Energy and Commerce Committee. We will need your help to urge them to CLOSE THESE LOOPHOLES and make additional improvements to the bill. In particular, Greenpeace would like to see:

• Requirement for implementation of safer chemical processes at chemical plants in the two highest risk tiers and prioritize funding for publicly owned water facilities that convert to safer processes.
• Involvement of employees in inspections, prevention of abuse of employee background checks, compensation of employees in the event of a shutdown and provisions for employees & first responders with training grants.
• Increased accountability to make non-security related information available to replicate success stories and make compliance information public.

Are you at risk? Click here to find out.

Greenpeace Communications Center, Aomori, Japan:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The defense expert witness Prof. Dirk Voorhoof has just left Japan after a whirlwind of press interviews, speaking events, and on Monday, a reception with Greenpeace Japan, Amnesty International Japan, ASEED and others commemorating the 20th anniversary of Japan ratifying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.  This agreement is the basis for Vorhoof’s opinon and the international human rights argument for Junichi and Toru’s innocence. By uncovering a whale meat embezzlement scandal the Tokyo Two were contributing to an important debate and fulfilling their role as an NGO, a watchdog in a democratic society.  

After updates of disputed convictions on the grounds of  freedom of speech cases such as the Tachikawa case where activists were detained for 75 days for leafletting and later convicted by the Japanese Supreme Court.  To announce a new future for freedom of expression and NGO work like that of the Tokyo Two and Greenpeace, Prof. Voorhoof said a few words and popped open a bottle of Cava.  

After the dust clears and a plane takes Voorhoof back to Belgium, the Greenpeace Japan office and T2 team are tasked with winning freedom for Junichi and Toru and waiting to see if Voorhoof’s eloquent and expert opinion will even be permitted into the actual trial.  In the meantime, the T2 defense team must prepare for the next pre-trial hearing August 4th and figure out how to get the Prosecutor's office to disclose information that they were instructed to handover.  Go here for more on the human rights argument and Voorhoof’s legal opinion.

Outreach to the publiv will be the focus until the trial start date which has been pushed back yet again, this time until October 2nd.  Plans full of colorful flare are being formed for participation in one of Japan’s most popular festivals which will take place in Aomori in August.

I have traveled to Aomori to provide some relief to the team there which runs the vivid Aomori T-shirt exhibit out of GP’s Aomori Communication Center (ACC).  People can come to see original T-shirt art from Greenpeace campaigns all over the world, other vintage Greenpeace paraphanalia, watch the whaling on trial video, get the scoop on other campaigns, and even add artwork to their own Greenpeace T.  Read about the opening .  Our US forests team would be proud to know that the Kleercut shirt seems to garner interest from people coming inside and Greenpeace Japan staff.  You can see a slideshow of some of the T-shirts exhibited here. 

I was leafletting today, getting passersby to come inside.  A detective came in to get a background on me since I was new to the area. They are watching the ACC most of the time.  We are restricted to the area in front of the ACC.  For me this is fine.  I have only been taught two phrases in Japanese for when I am leafletting and one is “Its just upstairs.”  

The town is quaint, the countryside is breathtaking, and the ocean breeze is a great break from the exhaust of Tokyo sprawl.  This is the place without key NGOs networking together, where one judge handles most criminal cases and whose decisions and recommendations usually lead to a conviction.  I do hope, that by reaching one person at a time, including our US supporters we can do something positive toward the success of the T2 in this trial, for ending whaling in Japan, and challenging norms of suppression of freedom of speech in Japan.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rainy season began Tuesday in Japan, and in spite of the heat and humidity at the Greenpeace Japan office, the staff has been working overtime preparing for the June 17th pre-trial hearing for Junichi and Toru.  With this hearing brings the arrival of Prof. Dirk Voorhoof, the defense team’s expert witness, who will be speaking to parliament members, university students, legal experts, as well as the judge in Aomori about his legal opinion regarding the human rights implications in the Japanese government’s case against the T2.  

That Prof. Voorhoof’s opinion will be allowed to be submitted to the District Court of Aomori is both unexpected on the part of the judge and emboldening to the defense’s case.   By submitting evidence regarding the whale meat embezzlement, the defense can provide a backdrop for describing how the action by Junichi and Toru was justifiable and arguably necessary to contribute to a debate of public interest and uphold Greenpeace’s role as an NGO and watchdog for a democratic society.  Prof. Dirk Voorhoof among other accolades, teaches at Ghent University in Belguim in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences and Faculty of Law, and is an expert on freedom of expression, democracy and human rights.  He will give evidence on some key components of the defenses’ case including the following:
 

1. Interference by police and judicial authorities in the case of the T2, would be considered a violation of freedom of expression and information protected under Article 10 of the European Convention for the protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
2. Press and NGOs have a similarly strong protection of freedom of expression and information, particularly information that contributes to a debate of public interest.  NGOs retain importance as does media, as watchdogs in a democratic society.
3. The protection of freedom of expression includes the protection of news and information gathering activities (like the box of evidence acquired for documentation by the T2 and returned to the public).  Additionally, substantial evidence like the box of whale meat is important to ensure sufficient facts in investigative or critical reporting---NGOs need to back up their claims and criticism.  
4. The European Court of Human Rights has the opinion that the searches at media offices or at the home and place of work of journalists or reporters, is interference on freedom of expression.  An example of this violation is the searches done on Greenpeace Japan and the homes of its staff members.  Searches that damage confidentiality and punishments such as the one Junichi and Toru are facing could deter media and NGOs from filling their role in a democratic society of informing the public of vital information or, in this case, a whale meat embezzlement scandal and government cover-up.  

For a more accurate description of the human rights arguments read the Prof. Voorhoof’s legal opinion to be submitted next week to the District Court of Aomori.

As you can see, the defense team has their work cut out for them, as does the Greenpeace Japan office and the T2 special team.  I am helping where I can in the work to free Junichi and Toru and win the favor of the Japanese public so that they can put whaling on trial.

More on the Tokyo Two trial. 

You may want to keep up to date with the International Whaling Commission proceedings beginning June 22nd, a week from Monday.  Junichi Sato, one of the TokyoTwo will be attending.  

Photos: Hisayo, Junichi, and Teall hard at work.  Also shown, photos posted at GP Japan of solidarity events by Greenpeace activists around the world.

June 18th, 2009

4:15pm Tokyo

 

Latest Controversy

Prof. Voorhoof was well-received by media at a press briefing regarding his opinion and the human rights implications of the T2 case.  Reporters were also interested in another new development.  On Monday, before the latest pre-trial, at the request of the court, the prosecutor’s office disclosed parts of a written statement given by the crew of the whaling fleet implicated in the whale meat embezzlement scandal exposed by Junichi and Toru. However, the core part of the statement has been whited out.  The judge must now decide whether to proceed in spite of the prosecution’s lack of disclosure.

Read about Greenpeace’s dossier of evidence exposing the scandal, a timeline of events, and more.

Looking Forward

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the world’s largest emitters gathered in Mexico for the US-led Major Economies Forum, several of my colleagues staged a banner hang to call on the United States to take the lead on climate action. A banner reading "Save the Climate, Act Now!" was unfurled in Cuernavaca City, where the meeting is being held. Leadership is urgently needed to achieve a climate-saving treaty at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December and, sadly, that leadership has so far not been provided by the Obama Administration.

We're calling on the Obama Administration to make serious commitments to deep mid-term cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, as well as to provide long-promised funds for developing countries to adapt to climate change, bypass the dirty energy sources of the past where possible, and protect the world's forests. The 16 other major emitters — Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and the United Kingdom — must see that the US is serious so they will take the necessary action, too.

Today things got ugly.  

We are in Valletta Harbor in Malta.  We learned that there were two vessels here owned by Fuentes, the tuna tycoon who controls over half the bluefin catch in the Mediterranean.  We decided to board the vessel to inspect the cargo and documentation.  Three women, Emma, Rita, and Liz, were the first to volunteer.

After the vessels refused our polite request to allow us access, Emma stepped on board to press the point. She was immediately attacked – they punched her, pulled her hair, picked her up and threw her overboard.  One person hurled a large wooden pallet which whistled by our heads, and another tossed a full bucket of paint into one of our boats.  If either of those had hit their intended targets, someone could have been seriously injured, but fortunately no damage was done.

Greenpeace is not known for taking no for an answer.  For us, the violent response to a simple request to inspect the vessel reinforced our belief that they had something to hide.  And even if they did not, greater transparency is essential to ensure that vessels are not able to obscure the kinds of illegal activity which have contributed to the bluefin’s decline.

We climbed onto the pier, where Emma again tried to board one of the Fuentes vessels.  She was viciously assaulted by a burly sailor twice her size, holding her down and punching her repeatedly in the face.  (We brought her to a clinic here for treatment, and she has a black eye and her neck is swollen but she’s ok.)

We refused to leave the pier, which is private property, until the two vessels were inspected.  The police came, and boarded the two vessels.  They reported to us that they did not see tuna on board, and that Malta fisheries inspectors were on the way.  Then we were taken to the police station, where statements were taken but no charges were filed against us.  Whether or not the fishermen will be charged with assault remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, corruption is widespread in the Maltese Fisheries Conservation and Control Division.  After several calls, they finally blurted “will you stop calling please; we’ve been instructed not to talk to Greenpeace.  If you want to pursue this further, I suggest you take this up with the Fisheries Minister.”  Calls to the Fisheries Minister went unanswered, but we will take this up with him in detail later.

There is a lot at stake here, especially for bluefin tuna, which are being mismanaged out of existence.  But also for fishermen – including many of the ones we spoke to last week, which are no longer able to make a living except by towing fish caught by much bigger, more expensive boats.

We were happy to see a French warship out on the high seas, inspecting tuna vessels.  The Mediterranean is too big for inspectors to cover every boat, however, and illegal activity continues.  And unfortunately, even the legal catch is far too much for the population to sustain.  

Last year, we overheard one tuna vessel owner complaining that it was not fair that Greenpeace activists were often women, as it’s awkward to beat them up.  Apparently, times have changed – these thugs did not hesitate.  Of course, their violent attack has already backfired, turning what could have been a simple (and frankly not very interesting) inspection into an international incident.  Footage of the attack has already traveled widely, and the story – and the fight to save bluefin tuna - continues to gather momentum. &nbsp

On Friday the 19th, I was invited to participate in a short Q&A session directly following the release of The End of the Line, a new documentary about the state of our oceans, at a movie theater in the East Village.

Even though Greenpeace has been engaging in rigorous cross-promotional efforts with the producers of this film, including campaigning against Nobu restaurant and taking to the water to expose the repugnant activities of bluefin tuna pirates, this was the first time I actually saw the movie in its entirety… and I’m now more convinced than ever that it merits our unconditional support.

The End of the Line is a masterful work that details one man’s crusade to save our world’s oceans.  The author and subject of the documentary, Charles Clover, found his love of the ocean as many of us do: at the end of a line.

While fishing in Wales, Clover snagged a very lonely salmon – a salmon that turned out to be the last one ever caught in that river.  Overfishing, rampant development, pollution, and habitat loss have combined forces to annihilate a population that once made annual pilgrimages to the Welsh highlands.

After witnessing the melancholy fade-out of this salmon run, Clover began to ask that simple question that so many of us are struggling so mightily to ignore:  Why are our fish disappearing?  His quest to find an answer became an odyssey that took him from Senegal to Tokyo and a thousand points in between.

The movie is replete with dazzling imagery; shots of Almadraba, a traditional bluefin tuna hunt undertaken by Spanish fishermen in the Strait of Gibraltar capture the true vitality and power of this regal animal.  During the sequence, I overheard a woman in front of me convey her astonishment over the bluefin’s massive size to her companion in hushed expletives.

The irony is that the bluefin pictured in The End of the Line aren’t large at all… maybe 150 pounds. Just a short decade or two ago, there still were bluefin swimming about that had reached sizes closer to their true potential – upwards of 600 pounds.  That's three or four times larger than the "massive" fish in the movie.

Our baselines have shifted.  Aside from the wrinkled old seadogs that haunt the docks of towns like Gloucester, MA, no one remembers a truly gargantuan bluefin.  No one remembers that there used to be alligators in Chesapeake Bay.  No one remembers the true nature of a healthy ocean.

A number of aging fishermen appear throughout the film, underscoring this issue by weaving an old salts’s lament into the story.  With their greybeard perspective and sun-stroked skin, these old men of the sea decry the waste and rapacity of the modern fishing industry, citing our rampant overfishing as a glaring example of today’s generation cutting its own throat in search of a quick dollar.

Near the conclusion of the film, an unnamed woman sums up the problem when she smiles into the camera and candidly delivers the line, “I like to eat fish.  To me, fish are food.”

Those who have read some of my previous articles and blog entries on this subject know that I do not necessarily dispute this statement.  I don’t have a problem with the concept of a human being feeding on a fish.  The problem arises with the strange assumption that once an animal is relegated to the status of “food,” it no longer merits any kind of respectful treatment.  It does not deserve to be treated as a living thing; rather, it exists for the lone purpose of one day graduating to the status of fish finger, salmon burger, or 2-piece nigiri plate.

Speaking to this issue (albeit somewhat indirectly) is Dr. Daniel Pauly, a UBC professor who is prominently featured throughout the movie.  Pauly is one of the most well-known fisheries scientists in the world.  He speaks at conferences and symposia in cities across the globe.  The particularities of his theories are often disputed within academia, but no one would deny the man’s brilliance and devotion to the planet.

At one point during the film, Pauly offers a frighteningly simple answer to Clover’s overarching question about the fate of the world’s fish.  When Clover asks, "Where are the fish going?, Pauly responds, “We are eating them!”

Fish may be food to some, but that does not mean that they are not still fish first and foremost, living organisms with which humans have a delicate and complex relationship.  This relationship is being abused to a terrifying extreme.  Factory trawlers, dynamite fishers, bluefin tuna pirates, absurdly greedy corporations (et tu, Mitsubishi?) and corrupt politicians have stretched the ability of our oceans to nurture healthy fish populations to the breaking point.

I beseech all those who read this message to make a point of seeing The End of the Line as soon as possible.  It depicts the reality of the state of our oceans better than this blog ever could.

 

Yesterday, Climate Progress called out the New York Times for running a front page ExxonMobil advertisement.

As Climate Progress points out:

"Needless to say — or, rather, in this case, needful to say — while today’s car has lower emissions of urban air pollutants thanks to government regulation, today’s car has, if anything, higher emissions of greenhouse gases, which threaten the health and well-being of the next 50 generations.  And needful to say, ExxonMobil has done more than just about any other company to undermine efforts to achieve the greenhouse gas regulations that could lower those emissions."

"ExxonSecrets details the millions of dollars that the company has shoveled to fund the disinformation campaigns of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, all of which continue to advance unfactual anti-scientific attacks as I have detailed recently (see posts on Heritage and CEI and AEI). Chris Mooney wrote an excellent piece on ExxonMobil’s two-decade anti-scientific campaign. A 2007 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report looked at ExxonMobil’s tobacco industry-like tactics in pushing global warming denial (see “Today We Have a Planet That’s Smoking!”). So it is especially egregious that the New York Times would take money to publish this disinformation on their front page."

Please email the NYT at nytnews@nytimes.com about this egregious ad and/or email its public editor at public@nytimes.com to explain you are “concerned about the paper’s journalistic integrity.”

Patrolling for tuna pirates here in the Mediterranean is a 24-hour operation. My day started with a four AM wakeup call "John! We have found more boats!" but others on the crew had been working through the night. By eight this morning, we had inspected and traded information with nine boats.

Since the official close of the bluefin fishery, we have not been seeing the expensive pure seine boats that we frequently encountered earlier in the expedition. Instead, most of the vessels we see now are small, old, and worn. A couple people said the fishing has been “passable” or “mediocre,” but most have reported that catches have been quite low. One fisherman held up his net to show us his catch, and the fish were so small it reminded me of the “Tiny Fish” video. And as before, we have seen more fishermen who are no longer fishing, but instead towing cages for other, wealthier fishermen.

The cages can be quite large, over 50 yards across, and can hold more than 200 tons of tuna. The cage in this photo held 2800 bluefin. (We call them cages, but actually they are circular nets, supported by floats and plastic supports.) The captain of the boat towing these fish invited us on board for a tour, and at times it seemed that rust was all that was holding the vessel together. The fishermen had been at sea for 66 days, with very little shelter, much less luxuries like flush toilets or comfortable beds.

Back on board the Rainbow Warrior, we calculated that these guys had been towing over a million and a half dollars worth of fish. I don’t know whether or not they realized the value of their cargo, but it was very clear that these guys were not getting much of a share of the profits.

A couple fishermen mentioned that they had been fishing for a long time – one man said he’d been fishing for sixty years. Others said their families had always fished, which I imagined might mean as much as a hundred years or even more. Yesterday, however, I learned that people have been fishing for bluefin in the Mediterranean since before the rise of the Roman Empire. It is difficult for most of us to even imagine that kind of continuity of history, tradition, and culture.

And now, a fish that has been prized – and fished sustainably - for thousands of years has gone from abundance to the verge of extinction in just a few short decades. This is an emergency, and we are here to sound the alarm. We can only hope that our wake up call is enough to jolt the members of ICCAT to their senses, while there is still time. Or better still, to help convince the Obama Administration and other influential governments that the time has come to take responsibility for bluefin management out of ICCAT’s hands, and to bring the issue to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Stay tuned – we have been hearing reports that illegal vessels are seeking shelter nearby, so we’re on our way there now.

For the Oceans –
John Hocevar
Oceans Campaign Director
Greenpeace USA

Tomorrow, Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee will consider inserting loopholes into their own bill on behalf of the chemical industry. If adopted, these amendments will gut the Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Act of 2009 (H.R. 2868).

In particular, these amendments will tie the hands of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), perpetuate disastrous risks to communities and employees, and burden business and government with redundant studies. In addition, they could also exempt many of the highest-risk plants in the country — roughly one hundred plants, each of which puts over 1 million Americans at risk — from the best security measures. Read more here.

We don’t need more loopholes and inaction, we need a law that protects the 110 million Americans who are still at risk because the existing law ties the hands of the DHS. These amendments would only serve to continue tying the hands of the folks whose job it is to protect the American public, which is why we are trying to make sure they do not pass.

We the people can speak up and demand strong chemical security legislation without loopholes that favor industry. If you can call members of Congress on this committee ASAP, tonight or first thing in the morning tomorrow, it will really help. Just follow these steps:

1. Call (202) 225-3121, the House switchboard.
2. All of the members of these Homeland Security Committee members need to hear from us: Dent (R-PA), King (R-NY) and Lungren (R-CA), Pascrell (D-NJ), Carney (D-PA), Richardson (D-CA), Clarke (D-NY), Cleaver (D-MO), DeFazio (D-OR), Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Sanches (D-CA), Thompson (D-MS). Pick one and ask the operator to be put through to their office. If you're actually a constituent of one of these Reps, all the better. Representative Charlie Dent (R-PA) is among the lead sponsors of the loophole amendments, so if you're not a constituent of one of the Reps, he'd be a good one to call.
3. A staffer will pick up. Tell them you're calling to give the Rep. a message. Here's a script you can use:
   
   

   I'm calling to urge the Rep. to support a strong chemical security bill by voting against dangerous loopholes proposed for H.R. 2868, the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act of 2009. We need a law that protects the 110 million Americans who are still at risk due to the fact that the existing law ties the hands of Homeland Security, and these amendements would only continue to do so.

Thanks in advance for making a call. It's very important that we speak up and make our voices heard. The members of the House of Representatives were elected by us to represent us, not the chemical industry. That's why it's so important that they hear from us.

A very special edition of the International Herald Tribune has hit the streets today. It's dated "Saturday, December 19, 2009" — the day after the UN climate talks end in Copenhagen — and it reports the news we're hoping to see that day. Check it out:

(Click the image to view the online version of the paper; click here to download a low-res PDF.)

Personally, I'm especially fond of José Chingu's piece on the Amazon.

“Take care of our tuna, because they are going to exterminate them.” – Maltese fisherman talking about the big boats using purse seine nets and drift nets, which he said were responsible for the fact that he was no longer able to find many fish. 

The Rainbow Warrior is patrolling the waters of the southern Mediterranean.  We spent most of yesterday listening to fishermen.  We also carried out a lot of inspections, ensuring that boats were legally licensed to fish, but mostly… we listened.  Since few fishermen would be willing to speak openly over the radio, we visited their boats with our inflatable Zodiacs.  The first challenge was finding a suitable language.  Here in the eastern Mediterranean, we have already had conversations in Spanish, Italian, French, Arabic, English, and Maltese.  Then there is the fact that many of the fishermen are pretty angry – about the disappearing fish, and about the regulations that have been put in place to try to stop the declines.   

As we approached a trawler yesterday, the captain got more and more animated the closer we got, shouting, pointing, and even turning color.  The Greenpeace boat driver was from Tunisia, and reported that the guy was threatening to shoot us if we didn’t leave immediately.  We managed to strike up a conversation without anyone pulling out the heavy artillery, and the story the captain told was one that we had already heard many times from other fishermen.  He would prefer to be fishing, but there were no longer enough fish to make it profitable.  Instead, he was using his boat to help tow cages full of bluefin tuna caught by bigger, more expensive boats.  It was slow, boring work; what was once a way of life had been replaced with something that was just a paycheck.  

The owners of the bluefin fleets know their days are numbered, but are so far choosing to carry on with business as usual instead of doing what is necessary to ensure the survival of the tuna and fishery alike. And as often is the case, it’s not a question of jobs vs. the environment.  Which jobs are we talking about?  The large number of small-boat fishermen who have been connected to the sea for generations?  Or the guys on the multi-million dollar purse seiners owned by fat cats often based thousands of miles away?  The responsible fishermen who hope their kids and grandkids will be able to follow in their footsteps, or the ones who flaunt regulations in order to make as much money as they can as quickly as possible? 

We spoke to several longliners, which lay out lines that can stretch 30-50 miles dragging thousands of hooks.  This is a pretty indiscriminate way to catch fish, and bycatch is a serious problem.  Even those who were fishing for other species would still catch a number of bluefin, probably more than allowed by law.  However, the impact the longliners have on bluefin populations is a mere fraction of the damage done by the purse seine fleets, which can catch hundreds of tons of bluefin in a single day.  So while things have reached the point where every fish counts, we couldn’t help but see these small boat fishermen as victims and potential allies rather than a serious part of the problem.   

Finding common ground with the bluefin purse seiners is a bit more difficult, and so far they have not let us get close to them.  The only exception was when we came across a purse seiner in the process of transferring her catch to a transport cage, a process that we were able to capture on film.  This is another indication of how dire the bluefin situation has become: there are so few large fish left in the Med that today the most common practice is for fishermen to transfer the small bluefin they catch to floating cages, which are towed to giant tuna ranches in Malta and Tunisia to be fattened and eventually turned into sushi. 

This is an outrage on multiple levels.  First, we are witnessing the disappearance of northern bluefin tuna, one of the most remarkable species with which we share this planet. Worse still, this is happening despite the fact that it could be avoided if leaders in the US and Europe would simply demand that managers follow the best available scientific advice.  This creates not only an ecological outrage, but an economic and social one as well.  People who have fished here for generations are losing their livelihoods.  A way of life is disappearing along with the bluefin. 

Will ICCAT’s members take care of the tuna this year?  Or will they allow them to be exterminated?  It’s too early to say for sure, but you can be sure that we will not sit idly by. 

For the Oceans –  

John Hocevar

Oceans Campaign Director

Greenpeace USA

Dominica is a fabulous country, from its welcoming, friendly people to its unsurpassed unspoiled natural beauty. "The Nature Isle" although an apt description is such an understatement of what I discovered on my recent trip to Dominica. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll leave it up to you to explore Dominica's natural beauty through the photos and video posted here on our website. Suffice it to say photos don’t do it justice. As the lead campaigner on whales for GreenpeaceUS and after hearing that Dominica has decided that is not in their best interest to continue to support Japan, at the International Whaling Commission (IWC), in Japan's quest to re-establish commercial whale hunting I had to go there for myself and see what’s up.

Dominica's Prime Minister, Roosevelt Skerrit, announced in 2008 "This year the Cabinet took a decision that Dominica shall abstain on the issue of commercial whaling; we are breaking a trend that we have maintained for a number of years," adding that the decision to change the island's pattern of voting was in the best interest of the country. He kept his promise - Dominica did not attend the 2008 meeting of the IWC. In March 2009, speaking in Dominica's capital, Roseau, at the International Ocean Life Symposium, the Prime Minister reconfirmed that his government would no longer be supporting the whale-killing position of the Japanese government in the IWC. He said that his government would be acting in his country's "national interest." This makes Dominica the only East Caribbean IWC member country that does not support Japan's drive to resume commercial whaling.

Greenpeace applauds Dominica for their decision however having been in the politics of ocean conservation for many years I knew there must be more to it than just the Prime Minister’s proclamation. As I suspected there are many unsung conservation heroes in Dominica that have championed the cause of whale conservation for many years leading up to the Prime Minister’s change of heart in rebuffing Japan. The Dominican Conservation Association and the Waitikubuli Ecologicial Foundation along with many individuals deserve recognition and praise for their years of work championing whale conservation that is the true catalyst for this great accomplishment.

Along with the local conservation leaders, whale watching tour operators and tourist business leaders came together and convinced their government that being known as a whale friendly nation is truly their best path into the future. Join me and thousands of others in thanking Dominica. I will make sure the non whale friendly nations know of your support for Dominica at the IWC this month in Portugal.

Visit our Dominica site at: www.greenpeace.org/dominica

--Phil

In response to the U.S. Global Change Research Program report released by the White House today, Greenpeace USA Climate Campaign Director Damon Moglen issued this statement:

The White House report on climate change is a stark confirmation of what scientists have been saying for years: unless we dramatically curb our emissions, the world will face unprecedented climate disruptions that will lead to drought, flooding, rising seas, food insecurity and mass displacement. But it begs the question: are the President and Congress taking the action necessary to avert this crisis?

As the report makes clear: ‘Future climate change and its impacts depend on choices [we] make today.’ With international climate negotiations veering off course and an inadequate global warming and energy bill moving through the House, the time has come for President Obama to move from words to deeds and commit to doing what is necessary to avoid runaway climate change.

To minimize the risk of truly catastrophic climate change, scientists say we must take action to keep global temperature rise as far below 2 degrees Celsius as possible. Today’s report confirms that to stay within this threshold, we must take aggressive action now and that ‘earlier cuts in emissions would have a greater effect in reducing climate change than comparable reductions later.’ It is troubling that, even as this report was being finalized, senior Administration officials refused even to commit to a 2 degree limit on warming and argued that the world should emphasize long-term action over the near-term targets most important to head off climate change.

The Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that to avoid the worst climate impacts, the United States and other industrialized countries must cut their emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020. Yet the targets being developed by Congress, and supported by the President, fall far short of this goal. If we are to avert climate catastrophe, the President must deliver on his campaign pledge to set climate policy based on science, not politics.

To do so, President Obama must commit the United States to keeping global warming as far below 2 degrees as possible, and lead America and the world in meeting that target. We call on the President to use every tool at his disposal, both within and outside Congress, to create U.S. climate policy with scientific integrity, and to take that policy to Copenhagen in December as evidence that the U.S. will do what it takes to solve the climate crisis.”

Specifically, the President must commit the United States to:

• Keeping global temperature increases as far below 2 degrees as possible;
• Achieving real emission reductions of at least 25% below 1990 levels by 2020;
• Eliminating offsets that undermine real emission reductions; and
• Providing the substantial international funding necessary to stop emissions from deforestation and help developing countries adapt to unavoidable climate impacts and leapfrog the dirty energy sources that would further exacerbate the problem.

Today’s report is a clarion call that the President and Congress must do much more, and more quickly, to respond to the climate crisis. We urge them to heed that call.

Greetings from the Rainbow Warrior!

We are out in the southern Mediterranean, working to prevent the extinction of bluefin tuna.  I joined the ship in Malta, and we have been patrolling the fishing grounds between Malta, Tunisia, and Libya since yesterday.  There are quite a lot of boats in the area, which is itself a big part of the problem – too many boats chasing too few fish. 

Bluefin are critically endangered, but continue to be sold in trendy high-end sushi restaurants like Robert DeNiro’s Nobu chain.  Bluefin stocks here in the Med and in the northern Atlantic are (mis)managed by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.  ICCAT consistently ignores the advice of its own scientists, making a mockery of the “conservation” that is ICCAT’s middle name.  Catch limits for this year were set at nearly double the levels recommended by ICCAT scientists to enable the species to recover.

The US Government is a member of ICCAT.  While the US role tends to be a positive one, it has so far been willing to go along with ICCAT’s mad rush towards extinction for one of the most remarkable creatures in the sea.  Weighing as much as a car, the warm-blooded bluefin is still capable of maintaining speeds of up to 45 miles per hour. 

This year, the big question is whether the US will seek to ban commercial trade of bluefin by proposing it to be listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or whether it will continue to leave matters in the corrupt hands of ICCAT.   We’re out here confronting illegal fishing, and compiling evidence which we will share with relevant US and ICCAT authorities.

Things can get a bit tense, as the declining fish populations have created a sense of desperation among many fishermen here.  In 2006, French tuna boats blockaded the Rainbow Warrior in Marseilles.  Last year, Turkish tuna fishermen attacked the Arctic Sunrise, disabling our helicopter with lead weights. 

In reality, however, the measures Greenpeace is proposing may well be the best chance to save the bluefin AND the fishery: creating marine reserves to protect vital spawning areas, adhering to scientific recommendations, and closing the fishery until the species can recover.  Stay tuned, and I’ll keep you updated from out here on the front lines.

For the oceans,

John Hocevar
Oceans Campaign Director
Greenpeace USA

As Congress finally begins to move chemical security legislation in the House Homeland Security and Energy & Commerce Committees, Greenpeace is urging everyone to weigh in and remind Congress what they have to do before October 4th when the fatally flawed temporary law expires.  A blue-green coalition of more than 50 organizations including the Steelworkers, UAW, Teamsters, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Sierra Club, U.S. Public Interest Group are also working hard.

For almost eight years this legislation has been held up by a coalition of chemical industry lobbyists representing giants like Dow and DuPont, the Bush administration and their allies in Congress.  In 2008 the industry deployed some 200 lobbyists spending millions to successfully stall this legislation for the seventh year in a row.  In the same seven years, hundreds of chemical plants have converted to safer chemicals, eliminating risks to millions of Americans.  Unfortunately at the current rate it could take 70 years to eliminate these hazards at the nation’s highest risk plants.

This year the chemical lobby is at it again. As you can see by their March 2nd letter to Congress, they are obsessed with killing legislation that could require any chemical plant to use safer chemicals that will eliminate the risk of a Bhopal magnitude disaster. Instead they are pressuring Congress to make the temporary law permanent. They ghost wrote that law in 2006 in a successful effort to derail stronger legislation. That “law” actually PROHIBITS the government from requiring the use of safer chemicals and EXEMPTS thousands of chemical facilities completely, including all water treatment plants.

Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the largest chemical companies are pretending to have a kinder, gentler side in contrast to the more publicly dogmatic wing that signed the March 2nd letter. They apparently think Congress is as naive as Little Red Riding Hood because this “kinder” wolf is the primary lobbying arm of Dow and DuPont, aka the American Chemistry Council (ACC). By not signing the March 2nd letter the ACC companies hope Congress will forget that they spear headed the industry lobbying over the last eight years that either killed, delayed or weakened chemical security legislation.  As you can see by the flow chart, ACC leaders Dow and DuPont are also prominent members of many of the hard-line lobbying groups that signed the March 2nd letter.  

Now not all the companies in these lobbying groups necessarily agree with the March 2nd letter. The railroads are also members of some of these groups but in February 2008, the Association of American Railroads released a statement saying: "It's time for the big chemical companies to do their part to help protect America. They should stop manufacturing dangerous chemicals when safer substitutes are available. And if they won't do it, Congress should do it for them." 

The railroads are the largest shippers of the poison gases that make them and U.S. chemical plants among the most vulnerable terrorist targets in the U.S.  Shipping these gases represents less than 0.3 percent of their business but it’s 80 percent of their liability.

Recognizing that major companies such as Dow and DuPont also have enormous liability exposure, we sent their CEOs extensively documented letters citing the millions of people that Dow and DuPont plants put at risk and urged them to join other companies in switching to safer available chemicals.  We also asked them to follow the railroad’s example and break with the industry groups lobbying AGAINST legislation that could ensure that high risk plants convert to safer chemicals.  I wish we could say we’ve reached a break through with them but I can say we’ve definitely gotten their attention at the highest levels.

Remember, help is on the way.  It’s in your own emails, calls and letters to Congress. The two House Committees taking up this legislation understand the stakes but they need to hear from you today if they’re going to keep the proverbial wolf away from the door.  If we’re successful this summer the next stop will be the House floor, hopefully no later than September.  In the meantime the U.S. Senate will have to get serious because the chemical lobby doesn’t take the summer off.

--Rick

 

Late last night the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private lending arm of the World Bank, withdrew the $90 million dollar loan to Brazil’s cattle giant Bertin. The loan was used for the company to further expand into the Amazon region, which was causing destruction of the rainforest and fuelling global climate change.  While on one hand Lula’s government was making commitments to reduce deforestation rates in the Amazon, on the other hand the IFC was helping to expand the Brazilian cattle sector which is now the largest single source of deforestation in the world.  

Globally forest destruction accounts for almost 20 percent of global warming causing emissions, which is more climate pollution than all the world's cars, trucks, trains, planes, and ships combined. Brazil ranks as the world’s fourth biggest climate polluter, largely because of Amazon destruction. Although the IFC published a benign statement on its website late last night about the terms of the cancellation, this announcement comes just two weeks after the release of the Greenpeace report “Slaughtering the Amazon.”

The Greenpeace report revealed how the financial backing of the Brazilian cattle industry by the IFC and President Lula’s government via its national development bank (BNDES) has led the industry to become the largest single source of deforestation in the world and a major source of global greenhouse gas emissions. The report also shows how cattle products from ranches involved in illegal deforestation in the Amazon rainforest --as well as in the invasion of indigenous lands and slavery--contaminates the supply chains of top brands such as Adidas, Reebok, Timberland, Geox, Clarks, Nike, Carrefour, Gucci, IKEA, Kraft, and Wal-Mart.

By helping Bertin to expand into the Amazon, the IFC has been driving further destruction of the rainforest for products that often make their way into global meat or leather products while undermining Brazil’s commitments to reducing deforestation. For a bank that portrays itself as the “knowledge bank”, this was a very ill conceived and thoroughly destructive use of international resources. The last $30 million dollar  hand-out from the IFC will no longer be given to Bertin and it is anticipated that the IFC will ask Bertin to return early the $60 million dollars it has already invested in the company. The World Bank Group is set to lend another $1.3 billion dollars to Brazil for “environmental protection.”

At Greenpeace we are calling for a commitment to Zero Deforestation and global solutions that will protect forests and reduce forest related emissions that are making global warming worse. In the fight to save the Amazon, every step will count so we are asking US consumers to join us in taking on companies like Nike, Timberland, and Adidas which cannot demonstrate that the leather in our shoes is not driving deforestation in the Amazon.

 -Lindsey 

As you may know by now, Greenpeace released a report June 1 called Slaughtering the Amazon, which demonstrated the connections between the cattle sector and deforestation. Today we saw one of our first major victories as Brazilian retailers banned meat from cattle that were raised in deforested areas in the Amazon.

As the Reuters piece points out:

"CBD, Wal-Mart and Carrefour will ban beef purchased from farms accused by the Para state prosecutors office of deforestation and will demand documents from slaughterhouses related to the transit of the cattle, Abras said.

The companies also intend to conduct an independent audit to assure that meat that they buy is not from deforested areas."

Here in the US we are not a large importer of Brazilian beef that could be driving deforestation in the Amazon but we do suspect ties to US companies using leather from illegal cattle ranching in the Amazon.  While we focus on the campaign to get Nike, Timberland, Adidas, and others to prove the leather in our shoes is not from destroyed Amazon, our colleagues in Brazil are keeping the pressure on the their domestic meat sector which is the other half of the cattle-related deforestation equation.

- Lindsey

 

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

By Harvey Wasserman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There’s a lot going on in the world these days. We’re facing environmental crises the likes of which mankind has never faced before: global warming, shocking rates of deforestation, dead zones and overfishing in our oceans, massive amounts of toxic e-waste being dumped in poor countries.

The only rational reaction to these crises, as far as I’m concerned, is to take action. Now is not the time to get depressed or feel hopeless. Now is the time to do whatever we can to build a clean, healthy, and sustainable future for all life on Planet Earth.

Greenpeace is on the frontlines of the fight to build a sustainable future, and we need you to join us. The environmental crises we’re facing are immense, but together we can solve them. It will take all of us working together, though.

That’s why we’d like to invite all of you to join us on June 17th for a Greenpeace volunteer meeting. Our field organizers are hosting these meetings in 20 cities across the country. Go here and search the drop-down menu for a city near you, then fill out the form to let us know you’ll be attending. The local field organizer in your community will be in touch to let you know the details of the meeting. (You can also visit www.greenpeace.org/volunteer and look for an organizer near you on our handy Google map.)

If you don’t see a city in the drop-down menu that is within roughly 30 miles of where you live, though, don’t worry! You can still get involved! Either click the link on that same page, or simply go here, then give us your info, and we’ll be in touch to let you know how you can help build a green and peaceful future.

Biodiversity.  It’s hardly a word you hear around dinner tables and water coolers in America.  It’s a wonky word, but what it stands for – the diversity of life on the planet – is the basis of human life and prosperity on Earth.  Pretty darn important!

Biological diversity is intimately linked to both cutting climate pollution and adapting to a changing climate.  While we debate the best way to save our climate, we also need to safeguard biodiversity.  In particular, we need to pay attention to how different proposals to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) affect biodiversity.

According to a new report commissioned by Greenpeace, a fund-based approach to REDD is much better suited to protect biodiversity than offset-based REDD schemes.  You can read the summary of the report here.

To understand why, we need to look at the big picture.

Most political observers believe the U.S. is moving towards a “cap and trade” system to manage carbon pollution.  The idea is pretty simple: issue a limited number of certificates to pollute, then lower that number over time so it becomes more attractive to invest in climate-friendly ways of doing business.  At the same time, let companies trade credits for flexibility and to create potential profits for those that conserve.  Cap…and trade.

But polluters want to keep polluting, and to do it at a cheap price.  This is where offsets come in.

An “offset” is a permit polluters buy to continue business as usual.  Instead of cleaning up their act, polluters “outsource” their climate responsibilities to other places, usually overseas.  In these other places, the offset activities are often very different from the polluting activities they are supposed to excuse.  Problems with quality, measurement and longevity of offset activities can actually result in more climate pollution, not less.

Offsets based on forests create very cheap offsets.  By the ton of calculated carbon value, they’re a bargain compared to solar panels or other clean technologies.

Because polluters want the cheapest offsets possible, and because only some tropical forest nations have the capacity to participate in international carbon markets, offsets would tend to protect certain forest areas, but not others.  This means other forests would be vulnerable to the drivers of deforestation (logging, agribusiness, etc) which can jump from country to country in today’s global economy.

This problem, called “leakage” in climate circles, can actually increase pollution since it cancels out climate benefits of offsets while the pollution the offsets are supposed to compensate for (like coal burning in Ohio) continues.

It also means big problems for biodiversity, since we could end up protecting one forest and losing another.  Saving orangutans in Indonesia and driving gorillas to extinction in the Congo?  Not a good idea.

Instead of offsets, Greenpeace supports a flexible fund approach to REDD that can be used to protect tropical forests worldwide.  The fund would minimize leakage and would achieve cuts in climate that are in addition to – not in place of – climate progress in industrialized nations like the US.  By applying incentives to protect biodiversity, a well-managed REDD fund is a real win-win for the climate and life on Earth.

-Rolf

Anyone who has listened to the radio, watched television, read a newspaper, surfed the internet, or chased after celebrity gossip in the past couple of weeks has likely heard about something about a particular sushi chain getting called out for a history of nefarious behavior.

The chain in question is Nobu, the fantastically successful joint venture of reknowned chef Nobu Matsuhisa, the Raging Bull himself Robert De Niro, and three other partners. Nobu is a sushi titan, with twenty-four locations in various chic neighboorhoods throughout many of the world's most glamourous cities, not to mention a menu replete with dozens of price tags that would make the average recession-choked American both green with envy and red with rage.

Nobu is under siege from all sides for its continual disregard for the health of our planet.  The high-end chain sells a tremendous amount of bluefin tuna, much of which is critically endangered Northern bluefin (Thunnus thynnus) from the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.  Despite repeated warnings about the looming commercial extinction of this majestic fish from a vast international amalgamation of scientists, actors, conservation organizations, foodies, activists, bloggers, aquaria, filmmakers, politicians, and even a European Prince, Nobu resolutely presses forward, offering no comment and refusing to alter its menu in the slightest.  The restaurant's response is akin to a tantrum-throwing child clapping his hands over his ears while stomping his feet, or perhaps to a yoked horse charging towards a cliff regardless of its own life or the lives of those in the stagecoach attached to it.  Nobu's arrogant denial of the reality of our mutual challenge -- the continual decline of the health of our oceans -- is a serious problem.

But this is not about just one restaurant.  Nobu is a symbol; it represents the old guard of restauranteurs whose lofty perches often distance them from the plebian masses.  Moreover, Nobu is a rallying point -- as an endangered species-slinging, celebrity-owned, stratospherically-priced haunt for the upper crust, it's a perfect target for those who are itching for a greater level of corporate responsibility within the restaurant industry.

Nobu and Greenpeace have a history.  Greenpeace has already “outed” Nobu on their unsustainable practices (this interaction is featured in the forthcoming documentary The End of the Line, based on the excellent book by Charles Clover).  Nobu promised to label bluefin as an endangered species on all of their menus, but subsequently changed tactics and cut off communications.  The one menu that reflects any change whatsoever is at the London branch, which uses a microscopic footnote to indicate that bluefin is "environmentally challenged."

This thunderous understatement aside, Nobu has done absolutely nothing to protect that very fish which has so heavily contributed to the jingling pockets of the restaurant's owners.  Our oceans cannot endure this situation any longer. 

I view direct confrontation as an avenue of last resort, only to be used when all other tactics have been exhausted.  In this case, Nobu has been stonewalling environmental entreaty for over a year while the chain contiunues to plunder the ocean for its own insatiable greed.  To expose and spotlight this edacious behaviour, John Hocevar, Greenpeace's Oceans Campaign Director, developed a mock Nobu menu -- a Swiftian satirization of Nobu's reckless quest for profit at all costs.  What is the difference, the menu suggests, between Northern bluefin and mountain gorilla, Iberian lynx, or California condor?  All of these animals are critically endangered.  Why is it acceptable to serve the former, when the presence of any of the latter three on a restaurant menu would no doubt solicit a restaurant critic's verbal equivilant of a molotov cocktail through the front window?

Over the past week, Greenpeace activists in both New York and Los Angeles have staged "dine-ins" at Nobu's TriBeCa and West Hollywood locations, festooning the restaurant with mock menus, taking up table space, and demanding to speak to the manager about Nobu's egregious disregard for our planet's welfare.

The actions were conducted in a precise manner that was aimed at sending a message to upper management without undue disruption of other restaurant patrons.  Nobu servers were generously tipped by Greenpeace activists; ownership's head-in-the-sand mentality does not justify behavior that would send the waitresses and waiters, who have no decision-making power but who do have families and livelihoods, home without the tips on which they depend.  We are, after all, in a recession.

The point of all this is to take the issue to Nobu on the restaurant's home turf.  In addition to being lambasted in the press, demonized in a documentary, and boycotted by celebrities, Nobu now must contend with activists that march directly into the restaurant to speak their minds.

Nobu is a trend-setting establishment that not only spans the globe, but wields incredible influence at the top of the sushi industry food chain. The innovative akumen and staggering talent of Nobu Matsuhisa are undeniable; he is undoubtedly capable of creating delectable dishes from both sustainable and unsustainable sources alike. Why, then, is he so resistant to use these gifts in an environmentally friendly manner?

Still, viewing this issue as "environmentalists v Nobu" is missing the point. Both groups want the same outcome: a healthy and productive ocean that can provide all the ecosystem services to foster sustainable business and healthy living. If Nobu were to drop bluefin and adopt a sustainable business model, it would be in the interest of the environmental community to promote the restaurant and encourage consumers to patronize it, rather than the unfortunate current situation.

Nobu needs to change their practices and begin to demonstrate corporate responsibility. Although environmentally rapacious and irresponsible businesses no longer have a place in this changing world, it is in everyone's interest that sustainable and wisely managed establishments thrive and succeed.

Today is World Oceans Day.  It’s always a little bittersweet when things as large and vital as "earth" or "oceans" are marked with a Day like this, particularly when the urgency and severity of the state of our planet requires all hands on deck. In fact, things are so bad that it can be easy to forget that we have actually made a lot of progress in recent years, and to lose sight of the fact that solutions ARE within our grasp.

So this World Oceans Day, I’d like to take a moment to remind us all – myself included – just how far we’ve come.  

The high seas, the areas of the oceans beyond national jurisdiction, make up nearly two thirds of the surface of our planet.  Yet for nearly the whole of human existence, the high seas have been almost completely unregulated.  It wasn’t until the early 70s that we started to change how we think about the oceans.  Gradually, we have come to realize that the sea is not bottomless, that what we do there can have lasting consequences.

This realization has enabled significant reforms.  First, we tackled ocean dumping.  At the time, Greenpeace was decried as unreasonable and alarmist for arguing that we needed to stop dumping nuclear waste into the oceans.  Fortunately, we were able to help policy makers come to their senses, and now, just a few years later, it seems hard to imagine that this was ever even a contentious issue.  Further bans on incineration at sea, dumping of sewage sludge and industrial waste have meant that millions of tons of toxic materials are no longer dumped into the oceans each year.

Turning our sights to another highly visible and serious problem, we fought for and won a moratorium on commercial whaling.  While Japan, Iceland and Norway continue to flaunt the ban, the number of whales killed today is a tiny fraction of what it once was, and many populations have begun to recover.  Populations of humpbacks, bowheads, blue whales, and right whales are increasing between 3 and 12% a year, and eastern gray whales have gone from a few hundred individuals in the early 1900s to more than 20,000 today.

Next, we successfully campaigned for a United Nations ban on giant high seas drift nets, some of which stretched over 40 miles long.  Called “walls of death” due to their ability to indiscriminately kill marine life, the ban has ended the needless deaths of hundreds of millions of dolphins, sea birds, sharks, turtles and other creatures.

As understanding of marine ecosystems advanced, efforts to protect them have grown more sophisticated.  Greenpeace, together with the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, pushed the UN to protect vulnerable seafloor habitats.  A 2006 resolution called on policy makers to ensure that destructive bottom trawl fisheries did not destroy fragile coral and sponge communities. Perhaps the best thing about the resolution was that it included a deadline: December, 2008.  This year, Greenpeace will press UN to ban bottom trawling in places where the resolution has not been implemented.

Starting in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the international community began recognizing that protected areas were needed on the high seas.  Several targets have been set, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity goal of establishing a network of protected areas by 2012.  Progress is being made, but it is admittedly far to slow.  Fortunately, not everyone is waiting around for the UN on this one.  Last year, a group of small island countries in the Central Western Pacific stood up to some of the most powerful nations on earth – including the US – and took steps to protect the high seas areas surrounded by their territorial waters.  This is fantastic news, both in terms of the impact it will have for fish and fishing communities in the region and for the precedent it sets internationally.  We can, we must, and... we ARE creating marine reserves to reverse the damage being done to our oceans.

 

Cool action today staged by my colleagues over at Greenpeace Italy.

As part of our efforts to get popular shoe brands Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Timberland, Clarks, and Geox to refuse to buy leather that comes from Amazon destruction, several activists demonstrated in front of a Geox store on one of the busiest pedestrian shopping streets in Milan. Not only did they stand outside the store wearing shirts and holding signs that said “Geox: Save the Climate, Let the Amazon Breathe,” but they also set up a huge Geox shoe that shot out smoke to give the impression that it was burning the Amazon, simulated by tree props underneath the shoe.

Check it out:





Perhaps the coolest thing about the action was the participation of passersby, many of whom posed for pictures with a message for Geox:





More photos in GPItaly’s Flickr.

Want to send a message yourself? Take action now and tell top shoe brands to protect the Amazon and the climate.

Did you know that an attack on one U.S. chemical plants could kill thousands of people, but despite the warnings, nothing has been done to prevent such a disaster? According to the EPA, there are about 100 chemical plants in the U.S. that each threaten a million or more people! Homeland Security has identified 7,000 U.S. chemical plants as “high risk.”

Currently, legislation is pending in Congress that would protect Americans by requiring more widespread use of safer chemicals or processes by chemical plants.

We just learned that the House Homeland Security Committee will vote on this chemical security legislation on Thursday, June 18th.

We need your help before the vote. Please take a minute to urge members of the Homeland Security Committee to support a strong bill and oppose any weakening amendments.

According to the EPA, 300 chemical plants in the U.S. put over 100 million Americans at risk. An attack or accident at just one of them could kill or injure thousands of people. But there are safer chemicals or processes available for each of these risks. More than 200 chemical plants have converted to safer chemicals and processes since the 9/11 attacks. The Washington, DC sewage treatment plant switched from using chlorine gas to a safer chemical within 90 days after 9/11.

Here is how you can help:

1) IDENTIFY THE HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE MEMBER FROM YOUR STATE. For the names of Committee members in your state go to: http://homeland.house.gov/

2) CALL THE CAPITOL SWITCHBOARD AT (202) 225-3121 and urge them to make "The Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act of 2009" strong and oppose all attempts to weaken it.

If you have time, tell us how your call went by posting a comment on my blog.

 

On October 10, 2008 a coalition of more than 30 chemical worker unions, public health groups, environmental groups (including Greenpeace), and government reform groups sent a letter to Congress urging them to pass a bill similar to H.R. 5577 before the temporary law expires next October.

T-shirts hold a unique place in Greenpeace campaigns, as they not only sum up our work in a creative and visual way, but even when looked at in isolation they tell crucial stories. They help to create iconic images, speak when those wearing them cannot, and otherwise help unify people behind a common goal.

Greenpeace Japan has collected over 180 shirts from other offices around the world. This exhibition is just a glimpse at some of the shirts that have helped shape our campaigns over 30-plus years.

 

*Update: Timberland has changed the email address used to reply to our supporters. Instead of GPeace@timberland, the responses are now coming from TCommunications@timberland

Although we are getting form responses, now is the time more than ever to write Timberland and ask, "Can you prove that my Timberlands are not destroying the Amazon?" Also, please note that if you complete our action “Tell top shoe brands to protect the Amazon and the climate,” you may receive formulaic responses from several of the companies that we're asking to help protect the Amazon and the climate. We'll have suggested responses for all of them shortly, in addition to a more complete response to Timberland's email response.

If you took our online action “Tell top shoe brands to protect the Amazon and the climate,” you might have received an email response from GPeace@Timberland.com that appeared to come from Green Peace and detailed the environmental commitments of the company. We all consider Timberland to be an environmental leader, and yet Timberland can not guarantee that the leather in their shoes isn’t driving deforestation in the Amazon.

On page 95 of our report, “Slaughtering the Amazon,” which we just released Monday, we note the links between Bertin and Timberland: "Bertin lists direct leather customers including Clarks, Eagle Ottawa, Gruppo Mastrotto, HTL International (Domicil), Natuzzi (Divani & Divani), Chateau d’Ax and Timberland."

We go on to describe the problem with Bertin: “Greenpeace has identified hundreds of ranches within the Amazon rainforest supplying cattle to Bertin’s slaughterhouses in the Amazon state of Pará. Where Greenpeace was able to obtain mapped boundaries for ranches, satellite analysis reveals that significant supplies of cattle come from ranches active in recent and illegal deforestation. Trade data also reveal trade with ranches using modern-day slavery. Additionally, one Bertin slaughterhouse receives supplies of cattle from an illegal ranch occupying Indian Lands.” (p. 66 of report)

And we are not the only ones calling Bertin and Bertin’s customers, into question.  

In a press conference yesterday, Brazil’s Environment Minister, Carlos Minc, said: “This ministry shares the ([Greenpeace] report's) view. Cattle ranching today is the main culprit of deforestation.”
 
We also have news that a Brazilian Federal Prosecutor has filed a $1,000,000,000 suit against Bertin, 20 farms, and 10 other companies within the cattle sector based in Para.  They are accused of avoiding forest regeneration in illegally deforested areas subject to previous fines. The billion-dollar suit also asks for the retention of the farm owners’ goods, payment of fines and compensations for environmental damage to society, as well as an embargo of any activity in the areas illegally cleared, and a demand 1,376,377 acres are recovered to be reforested with native species. Because they bought cattle from these farms, slaughterhouses and tanning companies are considered co-responsible.

Though Timberland has done good things, they are not taking responsibility for any role they must play in protecting the Amazon and our climate.

I am sincerely disappointed that a company that has made environmental commitments in the past has not requested a meeting with Greenpeace to better understand evidence that implicates their company. The cattle industry is responsible for 80% of deforestation in the Amazon, making it the largest single driver of deforestation anywhere in the world. And deforestation, in turn, contributes 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all the world’s planes, trains, and cars combined.

Now is the time to save the Amazon and our climate, and every step will count. Ask Timberland to step up already.

We're disappointed with Timberland, but they can still do the right thing--especially if they hear from you. If you receive an email from Timberland, please respond with a question: Can you prove that my Timberlands are not destroying the Amazon? And please cc: Kking@Timberland.com so that you know they are getting your feedback. 

- Lindsey 

Cattle ranches are the leading cause of Amazon deforestation. Tropical forest destruction generates more greenhouse gas pollution than all the world's trains, planes, and cars put together. Urge Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Timberland, Clarks, and Geox to refuse to buy leather that's killing our future.

Here's a funny one for ya: The picture above is just one of several billboards that greeted me on my journey to my sister's house in Pittsburgh last weekend. They all extolled the clean and green credentials of coal and some even noted that the dirtiest fuel around had received no bailout money (not true- $3.4 billion in the economic stimulus package was set aside for CCS).

But what I am wondering about here is what exactly do we mean by clean? I ask because as I drove into Pittsburgh, an area dependent on this "cleaner, greener" coal, I drove by another sign- an air quality alert board informing me that the air for that day in the city was unhealthy to breathe. That certainly doesn't jive with my definition of clean but perhaps the coal industry is using a different metric.

Brazil's minister of the environment, Carlos Minc, held a press conference today in Brasília to discuss fluctuating deforestation rates in the Amazon. During the press conference, Minc mentioned Greenpeace's “Slaughtering the Amazon” report, calling it an important study and saying that he personally agrees with its overall recommendations, especially the need to trace the origins of meat products and our demand that the Brazilian government stop financing economic activities linked directly to deforestation.

From Reuters:

Minc said he agreed with a Greenpeace report on Sunday that Brazilian beef fueled destruction and that the government was complicit by funding it.

"This ministry shares the (report's) view. Cattle ranching today is the main culprit of deforestation," Minc said.

Eleven meat packers, 20 cattle ranches and 72 suppliers would be banned from receiving government funds earmarked to rescue the beef industry, which is in trouble due to the global financial crisis, Minc said.

They raised and bought cattle from illegally deforested land, he said.

"We can't have public money financing deforestation," said Minc, who complained last week about a lack of government support in carrying out his environmental agenda.

But wait, there are more updates from the Amazon!

We’ve just received this from our colleagues in Brazil:

The Public Prosecution Office in Para State has sent the supermarket chains Carrefour, Wal-Mart and Pao de Acucar (controlled by the French group Casino) a recommendation to stop buying meat from animals raised in illegally cleared areas in the Amazon rainforest region. The prosecutors warn that if the companies disobey, they could be fined up to US$ 250 per kilo of product. Another 72 national companies that buy cattle products also received the recommendation.

The Prosecution Office also opened a billion-dollar lawsuit against 20 farms, a Bertin slaughterhouse, and another 10 companies of the cattle sector that operate in Para State, accusing them of avoiding forest regeneration in illegally deforested areas that were the object of previous fines. The lawsuit asks for the retention of the farm owners’ goods as well as payment of fines and compensation for environmental damage to society, seeks to establish an embargo of any activity in the areas that were illegally cleared, and demands the recovery of 557 thousand hectares to be reforested with native species. Because they bought cattle from these farms, slaughterhouses and tanning companies are considered co-responsible.

This past weekend, we released our report “Slaughtering the Amazon,” which exposed the supply chain by which these slaughterhouses and tanning companies who are responsible for Amazonian deforestation are supplying the demand for raw resources to make a variety of consumer products, from beef to boots. Our investigation found that popular name brands like Nike, Adidas, and Timberland could be using leather made from cattle raised on illegally deforested Amazon land.

The demand for cattle products leads to deforestation, and deforestation releases tons of CO2, leading to climate change. Write to these shoemakers now and urge them to be a partner in finding solutions to deforestation and global warming.

For the past three years, my colleagues here at Greenpeace have been investigating the cattle industry in Brazil. Our new report, “Slaughtering the Amazon,” is the product of that investigation.

The cattle industry is Brazil’s chief source of CO2 emissions and is also responsible for 80% of deforestation in the Amazon, making it the largest single driver of deforestation anywhere in the world. Our investigation exposed the Brazilian government’s complicity in bankrolling the companies responsible for deforestation in the Amazon, as well as several top name shoe brands – such as Adidas, Nike, Reebok, and Timberland – whose demand for leather may be supporting cattle ranchers that are illegally slaughtering the Amazon. Write to these shoemakers now and tell them to protect the Amazon and the climate.



Forests are vital to stabilizing the world’s climate because they store such large amounts of carbon. There is about one-and-a-half times as much carbon stored in the Earth’s forests as there is in its atmosphere. It is estimated that the Amazon alone stores somewhere from 80 to 120 billion tons of carbon. If the Amazon were destroyed, it would release some 50 times the annual greenhouse gas emissions of the United States. All of which means that if we are to curb global CO2 emissions, we have to save the Amazon. And that means we have to deal with the cattle industry in Brazil. Read more here.