Traitor Joe, here! It looks like you Greenpeace activists and Trader Joe's shoppers just won't quit, eh? You're relentless -- calling stores and demanding sustainable seafood. When you're out shopping you question store managers and that really make them feel the heat.

Well, I've been dubious lately. To throw you land-lovers off my trail for a while, I have resorted to telling more lies and being less transparent. How's that for customer service. Ha, ha ha.

You see, within a week of receiving feedback from "bleeding hearts like yerself," Trader Joe's announced that they would consider recommendations published by the Monterey Bay Aquarium in their seafood sourcing decisions. 

But, that was all a bunch of hooey, just something our marketing department came up with, I think. So, Trader Joe's backpedaled immediately afterward, stating that they may continue selling red list species.

Really, they don't have an agreement or partnership with the Aquarium on sustainable seafood.

Check out some of these dumb questions from ocean lovers and shoppers. They are trying to find out the truth, but I'll keep throwing them off my trail with all of the sneaky tools I have in my fishing nets.

Insincerely yours,
Traitor Joe

 

Our planet is in trouble.

Polluting industries and corporations are destroying our planet, resulting in increasing global temperatures, melting icecaps, leveled rainforests, and economic turmoil. All across the country, folks are waking up to the reality that if they do not act now to solve the environmental problems of today, the consequences are unthinkable. If we don't act now, who will?

Fortunately, an amazing team of young leaders are taking action. They are getting involved with the Greenpeace Student Network!

The Student Network is comprised of student leaders who tackle the most pressing environmental issues. We have organized and won inspiring campaigns, convincing corporations to change their ways and politicians to do the right thing. All thanks to our dedicated team of leaders, known as Campus Coordinators.

Campus Coordinators are located all across the United States, and even Canada! They work on priority Greenpeace Student Network campaigns at their schools and in their communities. They organize events like film screenings, phonebanks, and days of action. They hold meetings with elected officials, work with the media, recruit volunteers, and mobilize their campus to take action! They do all of this with top-notch trainings and expert support from our team of Student Network staff. Campus Coordinators develop their leadership skills and become an unstoppable force for green solutions on campus and in their community.

Thanks in great part to all of the emails and calls activists like you sent to the company, Timberland has announced a new policy agreement with Greenpeace that will help ensure the leather used in its boots and shoes is not contributing to new deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest or global warming. The policy will not only guide Timberland’s leather procurement from Brazil to ensure it’s not supporting deforestation, the policy also sets a deadline for Timberland suppliers to publicly commit to a moratorium on cattle expansion in the Amazon.



Timberland worked with Greenpeace to craft a policy that will require its leather suppliers to commit to a moratorium on purchasing any cattle raised in newly deforested areas within the Amazon Rainforest. Given the cattle industry is Brazil's top source of greenhouse gas emissions and the largest driver of deforestation in the world, a moratorium on cattle expansion is a critical component of any Zero Deforestation policy in Brazil that aims to reduce forest-related greenhouse gas emissions. Brazil has committed to achieving Zero Deforestation by 2015.

Thank Timberland for stepping it up a notch with its suppliers to help eliminate Amazon destruction from the leather sector in Brazil. Every step counts in the fight to save the Amazon and our climate!

Today Greenpeace was glad to be part of the announcement that the Amazon Soy Moratorium has officially been extended to July 2010. This is a crucial piece of Amazon protection, so its extension is welcome news indeed.

Approximately 100 km (62 mi) above Manaus, in Brazil's Amazonas state, the Anavilhanas is the largest river archipelago in the world with over 400 islands. © Greenpeace / Daniel Beltrá

The Soy Moratorium is essentially a commitment not to trade soy from areas in the Amazon Biome that were deforested after July 24, 2006. The moratorium is enforced by the Soy Working Group (abbreviated as GTS based on its Portuguese name), which was established in 2006 to implement the moratorium and is made up of representatives from the soy growing and exporting industry as well as various NGOs, including Greenpeace, WWF, and the Nature Conservancy.

Originally, the Soy Moratorium was an initiative of the private sector and various environmental and conservation NGOs, but the Moratorium received the support of the Brazil's Minister of Environment, Carlos Minc, who formally joined the initiative last year. Thanks to the Soy Moratorium, soy is no longer the chief driver of Amazon deforestation. That distinction belongs to cattle ranching, which is responsible for 80% of deforestation in the Amazon. Greenpeace is calling for a cattle moratorium to match the protect the Amazon.

Prior to the Soy Moratorium, large swaths of Amazon were clearcut for soy plantations, while tiny islands of intact rainforest such as this one were left behind to meet lax government standards. © Greenpeace

Read more about this great news here, as well as what the GTS says about the new challenges it is facing in monitoring deforestation and flagging new soy plantations for the industry groups to add to their Do Not Buy lists.

This morning HP headquarters received a very colorful message from Greenpeace activists. They scaled the HP building in Palo Alto, California and painted, "Hazardous Products" on the roof.

The message was simple and the medium that they used to paint was youthful. The Greenpeace activists used non-toxic children's finger-paint to cover over 11,500 square ft. of HP's roof. That's roughly the size of 2-and-a-half basketball courts.

Greenpeace is tired of hearing excuses from HP. They are backtracking on their commitment to eliminate PVC plastic and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) from their products by the end of 2009. Instead, they are extending the timeframe two more years until they go green.

If Apple can produce electronics that are virtually free of PVC and completely BFR-free — what is the hold-up for HP? They are good at making excuses for why they can’t honor their green commitments instead of putting their energy towards actually going green.

What ticks me off is that when HP says they are pushing the deadline two more years before they phase out toxic chemicals—that means two more years of hazardous, deadly pollutants damaging the environment and human health.

Take PVC for example. It is a nasty chemical. PVC contaminates humans and the environment during its production, use, and disposal. It is the single most environmentally damaging of all plastics, and can form dioxin, a known carcinogen, when burned. Two more years of PVC, HP, come on!

And, what about BFRs? They are equally nasty. BFRs are highly resistant to degradation in the environment and are able to bio-accumulate (build up in animals and humans) and can be released from products during use, leading to their presence in household dust and resulting in increased human exposure.

There is no reason for HP to continue using these toxic products. It's technically feasible and consumers like YOU and me want it too. Go green, HP, and stop backtracking on your commitment to a healthy, cleaner future for our planet.

 

Me gusta jugar video juegos.  This is the ONE phrase from high school Spanish that I remember. Yes, I am a gamer. Set me up with a night filled with Left for Dead... plop me on a couch so I can cuddle up with my PSP and roll around a Katamari. Okay, so I am a girlie gamer... true confession.

Last week, Greenpeace released videos that turned PS3s, Wiis and XBOX360s into Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft representatives (respectively). For those of you who have been entranced by a game for the past week, allow me to share my favorite:

 

 

In case you don't know what brominated flame retardants (BFRs) are or why polyvinyl chrloride (PVC) and phthalate should not be in your consoles or other electronics, check out our Q&A about it! 

Short answer - The life cycle of these electronics are not sustainable and they are dangerous for the folks who make and disassemble them. I advise you take action and ask the makers to do what is right - let us rest easy and play our games in peace!

Responding to concerns that its demand for leather is fueling deforestation of the Amazon and contributing to climate change, Timberland has taken a major step toward protecting the Amazon rainforest today. While the company's announcement of a new policy is a positive and welcome step, Timberland needs to put its foot down and tell Bertin, one of Timberland’s leather suppliers and one of the dirtiest companies in Brazil, that it will no longer purchase leather made from Amazon destruction, period.

Bertin supports the deforestation and burning of the Amazon to graze cattle. According to our report, “Slaughtering the Amazon,” that’s not all that’s wrong 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)

The Brazilian Federal Prosecutor based in Para State has opened a billion-dollar lawsuit against Bertin and other cattle companies for illegal deforestation. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private lending arm of the World Bank, has withdrawn a $90 million dollar loan to Bertin. It’s time for Timberland to take the next step and let Bertin know that it will cancel its contract if Bertin doesn’t stop supporting Amazon deforestation and global warming.

Please write to Timberland now and thank them for taking the first step, but ask them to put their foot down once and for all by establishing a policy of accepting absolutely no leather from Bertin until Bertin commits to a moratorium on any new deforestation for cattle expansion. If Timberland does not take a hard line with suppliers who are destroying the Amazon and our climate for cattle, who will?

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Pete

Yesterday I posted about an amazing victory for the Amazon, that being Nike's precedent-setting new policy to ensure that its demand for raw materials to make shoes isn't contributing to deforestation and global warming. I also wrote about the fact that the other companies we've been urging to establish such protections have not taken meaningful steps to do so, and specifically mentioned Timberland and the automated response they’re sending to everyone who emails them about their lack of a policy to protect the Amazon.

Although Timberland is responding to the emails they're getting from concerned consumers and activists, and in that response they mention an interest in engaging with Greenpeace, Nike and Timberland are in drastically different places. It's actually been rather disappointing to see Nike, a true sustainability leader, move forward with a policy to protect the Amazon, while Timberland, a company that is more than happy to tout its environmental record, has failed to make similar commitments. Timberland buys leather for its shoes from one of the nastiest slaughterhouses in Brazil, Bertin. Yet Timberland has refused to do anything beyond recommending to Bertin that they follow the law and stop illegally deforesting the Amazon and using slave labor.

The bottom line is, we need to stop deforestation altogether, not just what's currently considered "illegal." And to stop Amazon deforestation, we need to stop the expansion of cattle. Cattle expansion is not only destroying pristine rainforest that is critical to the health of the planet, but the emissions from the deforestation are contributing to global warming and therefore wreaking havoc on our climate.

Fire season has started in Brazil. Acres upon acres of Amazon are going up in flames right now (as much as an acre every 8 seconds, according to our report), while Timberland sits on its proverbial hands and just makes recommendations about the illegal actions of its suppliers. Brazil’s federal government is suing Bertin to the tune of $1 billion. The IFC canceled a $90 million contract with Bertin. The slaughterhouse giant Marfrig has committed not to support cattle expansion into the Amazon. Yet Timberland can’t decide if the shoes you’re wearing should or should not have come from cattle raised on acres and acres of land that has been cleared in the Amazon?

Timberland is parsing words about what’s legal or illegal while knowing that anything that happens in the middle of the rainforest as big as the Amazon is difficult to track or enforce. There is no good system of knowing what is legal or illegal on the ground in the middle of the rainforest.

But that's not what it's about. It's not about what’s legal and illegal, it's about what's right and wrong. Is it wrong to set acres of the Amazon rainforest on fire to raise cattle for your Timberlands? Is it right for Timberland to pressure its suppliers until they agree not to unnecessarily destroy the Amazon — which releases many tons of greenhouse gas emissions, making Brazil the world's fourth largest emitter?

Timberland says they want to engage, but the company has made no meaningful progress or overtures.

So, Timerbland, we’re looking at you. Where you at?

I have been a part of such an inspiring and vibrant youth climate movement in this country over the past several years. From seeing students on hundreds of campuses take on (and win!) clean energy campaigns to being one of thousands of young people to converge in Washington D.C. for Power Shift in 2007 and 2009, it is clear that the youth voice on climate is only growing stronger and stronger.

Only recently, however, did I become aware that another youth climate movement is vibrant and growing on the other side of the world in China. Chinese youth are equally worried, inspired, and active in their country, and they are determined to see their government address the looming climate crisis that unites us all.

Despite the rallying cry of the youth, right now the United States and China are the world’s two largest emitters of global warming pollution and have not done nearly enough to address the problem. Both nations must play a leadership role in moving all of us to a clean energy future.

That’s why we (the Greenpeace Student Network) decided to team up with Greenpeace China to launch a project called “Climate Connections.”  “Climate Connections” invites the youth of China and the U.S. to come together on the issue of climate change and build a global youth climate movement to call on the Chinese and American governments to address the climate crisis with the urgency called for by science.



If you are a young American, I invite you to be a part of this movement by joining us at www.greenpeace.org/climateconnections. Share your story by telling us who you are, what you are doing, and what you think should be done about climate change.

Then, starting on August 3rd, you will be paired with a young person from China. Together you can share your stories on climate change and clean energy and help build the movement of Chinese and American youth that are united on this issue.

Don’t wait — be a part of this movement today.

Not to toot our own horn, but here at Greenpeace, we’ve run our share of successful campaigns. Still, I think we’ve all been pleasantly surprised by the speedy response to our report, “Slaughtering the Amazon.”



The latest success in our campaign is Nike’s announcement today that it has established a new policy to ensure that its demand for shoe leather is not contributing to Amazon deforestation and global warming (read the Greenpeace press release here). You can help us thank Nike for protecting the Amazon and the climate. This is a huge victory, as it sets a great precedent to be followed by the other shoe companies named in our report, many of whom continue to greenwash their own corporate policies rather than take meaningful action.

I’ll say more about that in a bit. But I think, for now, I want to continue with the positivity. With that in mind, thought I’d run down a quick list of the biggest successes our campaign to save the Amazon has had:

• On June 1st, we released the “Slaughtering the Amazon” report, and the very next day, the Public Prosecution Office in Brazil’s Para State announced that it was opening a billion-dollar lawsuit against several farms and various companies operating there, including one slaughterhouse owned by Brazil’s cattle giant Bertin, a company named in our report as one of the major corporations backed by the Brazilian government who are purchasing hides from cattle ranches involved in deforestation of the Amazon, as well as engaging in slave labor practices and other crimes. That same day, the environment minister of Brazil said that he agreed with our report and echoed our assertion that the Brazilian government should not be funding Amazon destruction.

• On June 12th came news that several major grocery store chains in Brazil, including Wal-Mart and Carrefour, had banned beef purchased from the ranches accused by the Para state prosecutor’s offfice of being involved in illegal deforestation.

• The very next day, June 13th, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private lending arm of the World Bank, announced that it was withdrawing a $90 million dollar loan to Bertin.

• Then, on June 22nd, the world’s fourth largest beef trader, Marfrig, announced a moratorium that would prevent the company from buying cattle raised in newly deforested areas within the Amazon.

As you can see, the move by Marfrig came after the “Slaughtering the Amazon” report had really thrust an international spotlight on Marfrig, Bertin, JBS and other leading cattle companies who are driving Amazon deforestation and climate change, as well as companies like Timberland, Adidas, Reebok, and Clarks who buy cattle products from those cattle companies.

Like I said before, these shoe companies continue to be evasive rather than talk with Greenpeace about how they can ensure that their demand for leather isn’t fueling Amazon deforestation and climate change. Even if you’ve already emailed them once, you can email these shoe companies again and tell them you expect them to ensure they’re not part of the problem.

One thing I’d like to note: After you take action, you’ll most likely get an automated response from Timberland — a response that amounts to nothing more than pure greenwashing. But this post is already gone on long enough, and like I said, I’m more in the mood to dwell on the good things going on right now. So I’ll write about that more in the next couple days. Just wanted to say: Don’t be fooled by Timberland’s greenwashing in the meantime.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The accolades are still pouring in for departed anchorman Walter Cronkite. Few mention his critical "that's the way it is" reporting on the atomic melt-down at Three Mile Island. Yet Cronkite and TMI are at the core of today's de facto moratorium on new reactor construction — which the industry's new champion, Senator Lamar Alexander, now wants to reverse through the proposed federal Climate Bill.

Technicians who knew what was happening shook with terror as Cronkite opened his March 28, 1979, newscast with "the world has never known a day quite like today. It faced the considerable uncertainties and dangers of the worst nuclear power plant accident of the Atomic Age. And the horror tonight is that it could get much worse." (Read more about Cronkite's reporting here.)

Cronkite went on to say that "experts" had [wrongly] ruled out the possibility of an explosion. In the ensuing weeks and years, he did not report what remains one of the most heavily censored secrets of the nuclear age — that significant radioactive fallout did escape from TMI, that it scattered randomly throughout the region, that it landed heavily on certain parts of the downwind population, and that human beings (as well as wild and farm animals) were killed and maimed in great numbers.

Cronkite was also not quite accurate in characterizing the TMI melt-down as potentially the worst reactor disaster in US history. On October 5, 1966, human error led to a coolant stoppage at the Fermi Fast Breeder Reactor in Monroe, Michigan, 45 miles south of Detroit. Highly volatile liquid sodium could have exploded, releasing apocalyptic quantities of radiation that would have quickly killed thousands of people and permanently poisoned most or all of the Great Lakes, the world's largest bodies of fresh water. For a full month area law enforcement weighed the possibility of evacuating Detroit.

Like TMI, it's not definitively known how much radiation was released at Fermi, where it went, or who was harmed. Experts still debate why these two accidents weren't even worse, and how the nation barely avoided these radioactive mega-bullets.

There were innumerable technical differences between the two disasters. One was cost: Fermi became a $100 million pile of radioactive rubble, whereas TMI, thirteen years later, was priced at $900 million to build, and about $2 billion as a liability.

But thanks in part to Cronkite, there was also a gigantic gap in news coverage. Fermi got virtually none. I was Editorial Director of the University of Michigan Daily at the time, and Ann Arbor correspondent for Time magazine and the United Press International. But neither I nor any of my fellow journalists — including at least one other wire service reporter — heard a peep about this accident, which stretched through the entire month of our senior year just 40 miles away, and could have killed us all.

I finally did learn about the Fermi catastrophe in 1974 — eight years later — while reading John G. Fuller's We Almost Lost Detroit, published by the Reader's Digest Press. In hair-raising detail, Fuller reported on the horrifying story of an entire industry's incompetence, dishonor, fallout and cover-up.

In the ensuing five years, thousands of grassroots citizens marched on proposed reactor sites from Seabrook, New Hampshire to Diablo Canyon, California — as well as Middletown, Pennsylvania. The mass demonstrations and arrests spawned global news coverage that moved debate over atomic energy into the mainstream. It also prompted the Jane Fonda/Michael Douglas/Jack Lemon Hollywood thriller, The China Syndrome. With eerie accuracy, the movie predicted many technical aspects of what actually happened at TMI — most of which had been deemed "impossible" by the industry's expensive "experts" and apologists. When it was released within hours of the actual accident, it helped blast coverage all the way to the lead of Cronkite's CBS Evening News.

By 1979 the nuclear industry was — like today &mdsah; on the financial ropes. Despite decades of expensive "too cheap to meter" media hype, the "Peaceful Atom" was absurdly expensive and technologically untenable. All orders placed prior to TMI would ultimately be cancelled for a combination of economic, technical and political reasons. It is no exaggeration to say the No Nukes movement helped cancel scores of reactors.

But the essential unworkability of atomic power is what prompted the citizen's movement to stop it. Today's industry has surmounted virtually none of its core challenges, starting with its complete 50-year failure to solve its radioactive waste problem, and carrying through its inability to secure private financing or liability insurance for new construction. Today's "renaissance" is built on the hope of huge government subsidies, collective public amnesia, and three decades of the Big Lie that "no one was harmed" by the massive, unmonitored radiation releases at TMI. To this day there has been no public hearing to compensate some 2400 central Pennsylvania families who by the early 1980s claimed bodily harm and death from the plant's fallout.

None of that made it to Cronkite's Evening News. Though he became an ardent proponent of nuclear disarmament, the true story of what happened to TMI's downwinders has never cracked the corporate media.

Nor is it certain that the story of another melt-down today would be fully told. Before the mass No Nukes demonstrations and TMI, the networks might have claimed innocent ignorance. Cronkite had the integrity and clout to break through to the American heartland on that all-important first night.

Today's nuke-powered Big Lie machine has never been more powerful. Though a few cable reporters might cover the story, only the internet could be counted to carry the load, with high-paid deniers swarming over every independent blog. A TMI-scale melt-down would instantly evoke a horde of media locusts intent on devouring all coverage and dismissing all health and safety concerns. Their ultimate goal: to protect the massive economic investments in a technology that has long-since become human history's most expensive technological failure.

How effective they might be remains to hopefully never be seen.

But as you read this, the industry has again poured into Congress, this time targeting the Climate Bill. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has called for a "Sense of Congress" resolution to be attached to it that would endorse a doubling of the US reactor fleet — with 100 new plants — along with at least $50 billion in loan guarantees to make it happen. My next report will cover these efforts in greater detail.

But as the backroom horse-trading escalates, it is critical that calls start pouring into Congress. The nation — the world — cannot afford more Three Mile Islands, especially now that Walter Cronkite is no longer around to report on them.

--
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA is at www.solartopia.org. He is Senior Editor of www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.

You might have read in a previous post ("Something afoot in the Arctic") that the Greenpeace ship, Arctic Sunrise, is currently at the Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland as part of a 3-month expedition. The crew on board the Arctic Sunrise, which includes many respected scientists, is examining the effects of climate change on the Arctic. Specifically, they're bearing witness to the imminent loss of a 100 sq. km. ice island that is part of Petermann glacier. This video serves as an introduction to the ship tour and what they've found so far.

Monaco-Ville, also known as Le Rocher (the Rock), is a tiny little town tucked inside the tiny little pleasure garden that is the sovereign nation of Monaco.  Comprising about one tenth of the total area of the Riviera’s pocket Principality, this little hamlet is home to just over a thousand souls – many of them extremely rich. One resident in particular has achieved an astonishing degree of fame and fortune, merely by being the son of his equally diamond-encrusted parents: His Serene Highness Albert Grimaldi II, the Sovereign Prince of Monaco.

Albert Grimaldi’s home, the Prince’s Palace of Monaco, is a mansion of celestial stature that adorns the highest point in Monaco-Ville like a diamond tiara atop a prom queen.  It is a place of both breathtaking beauty and incalculable real estate value.  Still, despite his lavish digs and lofty title, Prince Albert and his Robin Leach-baiting lifestyle would not normally interest me (well, at least not for the purposes of this blog, but… I mean, come on, Grace Kelly was the guy’s mom.  How can my curiosity not be at least a little piqued?)  However, Prince Albert is not your everyday European kazillionaire blueblood head-of-state celebrity jet-setter.

Turns out he’s a European kazillionaire blueblood head-of-state celebrity jet-setter environmentalist.

Prince Albert is no slouch when it comes to saving the planet.  He has worked diligently to dismantle the Monaco Zoo, repatriate the animals into the wild, and transform the facility into a children’s park (although he does keep two nerpa seal pups which were presented to him by the Russian governor of Irkutsk).  He served as the patron of the Year of the Dolphin, a title given to the year 2007 (and later extened to 2008) by the United Nations.  He even took a trip to visit 26 different bases and research facilities in Antarctica to learn about the effects of climate change on the ice-clad continent.  Still, this was all just a prologue to what the Prince did about a month ago.

In June of 2009, Prince Albert co-authored a letter to the Wall Street Journal with Charles Clover, the author of The End of the Line. In the letter, the Prince openly decried the annual embarrassment that is the European Union bluefin quota.  He also acknowledged that the species is indeed endangered and that it merits legal protection rather than the unchecked over-exploitation it is suffering at present.

He concluded his regal communiqué with a masterstroke – a formal announcement that Monaco will propose to have Mediterranean bluefin listed as an endangered species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

The challenge has been that most people are unaware of how amazing this animal really is.  Most people have never seen a bluefin tuna, as these majestic creatures spend their lives swimming in the deep blue currents of the Atlantic ocean.  Most don’t know that if you let a bluefin tuna reach full maturity, they can weigh over 1000 pounds and exceed 10 feet in length.  The actual percentage of the global population that has ever seen a living bluefin tuna up close is too small to calculate.

As such, the country of Monaco, with its population of just over 30,000, is little more than a village on the international stage, but has nevertheless set a tremendous precedent here.  Under the guidance of its monarch, Monaco stepped up and took a stand against a barbaric and unconscionable practice that is occurring just a scant few miles from its glitterati-strewn shores.  A nation that is only rarely awarded delineation on a schoolbook map had taken a position at odds with those historically espoused by its comparatively gargantuan neighbors, its most important trade partners, and nearly every other country in the world.

A month later, the world was able to see Monaco as the leader it truly is.

On July 16th, 2009, le President lui-meme, M. Nicholas Sarkozy, announced that France, too, would be seeking to list Mediterranean bluefin under CITES.  This was a tremendous blow to the bluefin industry; while Monaco is neither an EU member nor a powerful enough state to pose a threat at the Convention meetings, France is both.  To compound the impact, later in the same day – a day which could be called “Thunnus Thursday” – a similar proclamation rang out in the streets of London.  Huw Irranca-Davies, Minister of Fisheries for the United Kingdom, declared that the UK would join France and Monaco in support of this noble goal.

While it is too early to predict the full ramifications of these events, it is extremely likely that the next CITES Conference – currently scheduled to be held in Qatar in March 2010 – will be quite a pyrotechnic show.  Countries like Japan and Spain have invested tremendous amounts of money in the Mediterranean bluefin fishery, and are predicted to vociferously oppose the listing.

So what can we do as individuals to support the actions of Monaco, France, and the UK?  How can we make our voices heard above the din of the political machine that is propelling the bluefin towards utter extinction?

Action:  Sign this on-line petition to support the USA joining France, UK and Monaco.

Action:  Greenpeace for a rundown of which seafood retailers are responsible.

Action:  Practice catch and release if you fish recreationally.

Action:  Get involved, sign up and voice your concern.

Action: Check out the Tag A Giant Foundation, where you can learn about the work that’s been done by some of the world’s foremost marine scientists.  The members of this crew have dedicated their lives to bluefin research and borderline fanatical in their devotion to the animal.  A good group.

If we are to save these gentle giants, the time is now.  Monaco, France and the UK are giving the bluefin a chance, and it is up to the rest of the world to continue the momentum.  We have the power to save the mighty bluefin, but only if our voices unite to demand it.

As for Prince Albert, none of this would have happened without his insight, his courage, and the small but undeniable voice of his Lilliputian homeland.  Sometimes it really does take a village to change the world (thanks, Hillary.)

This article was co-authored by John LoGioco and Casson Trenor.

Check out Greenpeace activist and organizer Mary Sweeters talking with Bill Moyers about last week's Mt. Rushmore action and the lack of leadership on global warming from President Obama. After promising to "restore science to its rightful place" in his inaugural address, President Obama is all but ignoring the science and listening to the fossil fuels industries instead. We need him to be a leader. Also appearing with Mary is Erich Pica, Director of Domestic Programs for Friends of the Earth.

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



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

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

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



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

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

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

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

Photo © Greenpeace/Nick Cobbing

Tune in to Bill Moyers Journal tonight and check out an interview he did with Mary Sweeters, one of our activists who was involved in last week's Mt. Rushmore action. In most areas, the show airs at 9:00 pm local time on PBS. But if you're not sure which channel or what time the show airs where you live, you can find out here.


Photo by Robin Holland.

Mary talks about working as an organizer in Chicago and what she's hearing from everyday Americans about climate change, and why she ultimately decided that the only way to inspire President Obama to leadership was through civil disobedience.The interview also covers a wide range of other topics — from grassroots organizing to the lack of leadership from President Obama on global warming. Mary is joined by Erich Pica from Friends of the Earth. Don't miss it!

Ahoy, Traitor Joe here. I’ve been having a good ole’ laugh at all these Greenpeace activists who think they can sing. Truth is, they can’t carry a tune!

Check out these lame lyrics:

I ate sustainable seafood, and I liked it
The taste of saving the oceans

I ate sustainable seafood, just to try it
I hope my friends will also like it

It tasted so yummy
It tasted so fresh

They are so bad, I bet you can't do any better. You land lovers can barely put complete sentences together -- let alone sing an entire song. It's just pathetic.

I'd rather listen to the sound of my fishing boat motoring through the seas pillaging the last remaining fish stocks, than listen to you all sing songs about how I am destroying the oceans.

Insincerely yours,
Traitor Joe

By now, F-gases are probably no longer the worst greenhouse gas that you’ve never heard of. But if the EPA would just approve non-F-gas refrigerants for use in the US, we could all go back to not needing to know anything about them. There are some signs that this might soon be the case.

Just in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's a brief backgrounder: F-gases are a group of industrial gases that include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). The "F" in F-gas is for Fluorine, the element common to them all. HFCs and HCFCs are commonly used today in refrigeration and cooling units in North America.

Why should we phase them out? F-gases are extremely potent greenhouse gases. They were originally called the “environmental alternative” to CFCs, the ozone-depleting refrigerants (such as Freon) that were phased out starting in 1989 when the Montreal Protocol went into effect. But F-gases are not an “environmental alternative” at all — in fact, they’re responsible for some 17% of cumulative greenhouse gases currently in our atmosphere (as of 2005). Some F-gases actually have a Global Warming Potential (GWP) value that is thousands of times higher than carbon (check out this chart on the EPA’s website for more info).

But the EPA has not approved F-gas-free refrigeration for sale in the United States. The main refrigerant alternative to HFCs and HCFCs is Hydrocarbon (HC). Greenpeace developed the first ever Hydrocarbon-based refrigeration technology, called GreenFreeze, in 1993 to prove the technology could work, then prototyped it and took over 70,000 orders to help persuade a manufacturer to start actually mass-producing them. Today over 300 million domestic refrigerators using the GreenFreeze technology have been purchased by consumers across Europe, Asia, and South America.

Obsolete regulations, however, are still keeping them out of the North American market. But there have been some recent signs that that is slowly changing.

The EPA recently determined that HFCs contribute significantly to global warming. This will hopefully help ease the applications pending at the EPA for non-HFC refrigerants through the approval process.

There are certainly plenty of companies hoping to break open the domestic US market for green refrigerators and coolers. Ben & Jerry’s has rolled out some GreenFreeze-based ice cream freezers at several of its scoop shops thanks to a “market test” allowance granted by the EPA, and Pepsi and Coke have both announced they’re going to use the technology in refrigerators and vending machines.

Meanwhile, Bosch is introducing a GreenFreeze refrigerator in Mexico, making it the first green fridge available in North America. So, now the race is on for companies to be the first manufacturer of non-F-gas refrigerators in the United States and Canada. GE has applied to the EPA for a permit to make and sell refrigerators that use isobutane as their refrigerant, hoping to roll them out by 2010.

Whoever is first to bring green refrigeration to the States will undoubtedly make a pile of green to reward them for their efforts.

I love Japan. I will be the first to say it! And it's not only because they have probably the best thing ever. I mean, c'mon! Happy Monday System! I was born to be there...

But seriously, it's my life goal to become fluent in Japanese, so I can watch my favorite Studio Ghibli films without needing subtitles. I really admire the art and the entire culture of Japan, I am drawn to it... but then, I read about what Junichi and Toru are going through. And my idealized image of Japan is thrown by the wayside. 

If you don't know the story, I'll give it to you in brief:

 

 

The Japanese Government has a program that uses lethal methods to practice "scientific research" on whales. Really, it's whaling for commercialization and when Junichi and Toru exposed this obvious hypocrisy  - an investigation was almost started on the whaling industry - they were arrested... for theft. 

Again, before the haters start in, before it becomes a case of "he who sins not shall cast the first stone," before it becomes a circular argument: Greenpeace does not stand in judgement. 

The real issue at hand here is that Japan, an awesome country by every right, is outright lying to their countrymen, the world and to themselves. 

I hope that the trial for Junichi and Toru forces the Japanese government to deal with the disparities of what they are communicating by words and what they are communicating with actions. An end to commerical whaling would be a great shift towards taking care of our oceans and in turn, our planet. Marine Reserves Now! 

These images pretty much speak for themselves.



If you want to send your own message to President Obama, sign our petition now.

And check out Matt Leonard, one of the climbers, on Democracy Now!

Greetings from South Dakota. Let me start out by saying, "thank you." Many of you have read about the action that 11 of us took at Mt Rushmore yesterday. It has been a long couple of days and the support that we have felt from all of you has made the long hours, the grueling conditions on the mountain and the time spent in jail, worth it. We couldn't do it without you.

I wanted to give you an update form the field. All eleven of us are tired but aside form a small amount of bumps and bruises we are all safe and  healthy. We are all out of jail and are currently awaiting our day in court here in South Dakota. I promise to keep you updated on how things progress.

I'm looking forward to giving you all a play by play of how thing went the day of the action. Mt. Rushmore belongs to all of us and I want you to know that while eleven us up were physically up there on the monument, we felt like we were up there speaking with the voice of every American that is standing up to demand action on global warming. So for tonight, I will say thanks and for tomorrow, I'll write more about the day of action to tell you more about how it all went down and to give you the opportunity to ask me questions. In the meantime, I'm going to have some dinner and get some rest.

If you haven't already, join me in taking action. Demand leadership on global warming from President Obama. And check out the video of yesterday's action.

peace,

Jess

 

Some co-workers and myself were relaxing and recounting yesterday's events when we started going through videos on YouTube... well some of my illustrious colleagues have never SEEN my favorite video.. and it shocked me. 

So, here I am shouting out to the world. Sigourney Weaver chills me, in a good way, and I feel honored that she took the time to help Greenpeace work and push for solutions for our planet. 

Take it away Dana Barrett! 

 

 

Hey, the woman dealt with Aliens and Ghosts! She's the quintessential tough cookie!

PS - If you haven't already, please please please please PLEASE(!) read/watch/skim the White House Climate Change Impacts Statement. It's so powerful and really is helpful for putting politics into perspective, in additon to NVDA. Really, the time is now to become pests and demand what is required and ignore the folks who desire soley to profit at the expense of the planet and the people and animals that reside in it.

 

 

We just posted this amazing new video – shot by our team in the field at yesterday’s banner hang on Mount Rushmore – to YouTube. Check it out, there’s some cool behind-the-scenes footage, and then you can see just how windy it was. Our climbers get tossed around pretty good. Just goes to show how incredible of a job they really did.



In addition to heaps of praise and words of encouragement, we’ve been getting a lot of flak from people who were upset that we would deface a national monument. My response to them is twofold: First, there are already climbing leads established on the rock, which the park employees use to clean the monument. Our climbers used those leads and were extremely cautious not to do any harm to the monument, and in the end they did not do any damage.

Second, all of the sanctimonious claims about our disrespect for what Mount Rushmore represents are completely baseless. We have utmost respect for the accomplishments of the great leaders who built this country, that’s why we chose it as the site for issuing our challenge to President Obama to be a leader on global warming. But Mount Rushmore was built on a mountain stolen from Native Americans. Adding insult to injury, we then carved a bunch of white people’s faces into it. So you gotta ask yourself: What does Mount Rushmore really represent?

For the record, a member of the local Oglala Sioux tribe has published an op-ed praising our action.

And our larger point still stands: If President Obama wants to be considered equal to the pantheon of great American leaders depicted on Mount Rushmore, he needs to start providing real leadership on global warming, the greatest challenge of our time.

The president is currently meeting with the rest of the G8 leaders in L’Aquila, Italy. Yesterday they held a press conference to announce that they were setting a target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. But that is not what real leadership looks like – that target had already been endorsed by 109 nations even before the G8 announcement.

Plus, as worthy as this long-term goal is, the truly critical issue is that President Obama and the rest of the world’s leaders still have not laid out an adequate roadmap for how we’re going to get there. In other words, they haven’t set short-term goals that are ambitious enough to get us to the long term goal of keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius. Scientists have clearly stated that the United States and other industrialized countries must cut their emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. But the Obama Administration, like Congress, continues to promote short-term emissions reductions targets that fall far short of what science demands.

We can’t continue to put off for tomorrow what science tells us we need to do today. While the 2 degree commitment would appear to recognize the severity of the crisis we're facing, the Obama Administration and the G8 have failed to provide any plan for staying below this critical threshold. Sign our petition now and ask Obama to be a leader on global warming, not just here in America but for the world as well.

After successfully deploying a banner 65 feet tall by 35 feet wide, our climbers have come down and have been taken into custody by authorities. But they got our message out loud and clear:



Our brave climbers rappelled down the face of Mt. Rushmore today to issue a challenge to President Obama: If he wants to get his face on this monument, he needs to be a true leader on global warming, not a politician.

The 60-foot tall heads on Mt. Rushmore represent four former presidents, all brave leaders who rose to the challenges of their times. For instance, there’s George Washington, our country’s first president. He’s known as the “Father of His Country” because when the American colonies were in crisis, he stepped up and led our forces in the Revolutionary War.

Obama now has the chance to lead our forces in an energy revolution. But instead of leading on global warming, Obama’s playing politics. He said it was time to “restore science to its rightful place” in his inaugural address, but sat back and watched as science was all but stripped from the Waxman-Markey climate legislation altogether at the behest of the fossil fuels and energy industries.

The worst part about this weak legislation is that it will not only keep America heading towards a full-speed, head-on collision with runaway climate change, but it will provide the cover for other developed countries to shirk their obligations to reduce emissions as well. President Obama needs a strong, science-based piece of legislation so that he can go to Copenhagen in December, when the next round of UN climate talks are scheduled to take place, and push for what science demands: 25 to 40% cuts in emissions below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 to 95% cuts by 2050. Anything less and we’re headed for disaster.

So we took this opportunity, as Obama meets with the other G8 leaders in L’Aquila, Italy, to send President Obama a message: “America honors leaders, not politicians. Stop Global Warming.” You can take action too, by signing our petition calling on Obama to be a leader on climate change policy in the US and internationally.

Three Greenpeace climbers have hung a banner on the face of Mount Rushmore to issue a challenge to President Obama: "America honors leaders, not politicians: Stop Global Warming.”

Watch it live in our streaming video: www.greenpeace.org/rushmore

This is just one of several actions Greenpeace has staged today as world leaders gather in L'Aquila, Italy for the G8 meeting.

Global warming is an environmental crisis the likes of which we’ve never faced before, but so far, our leaders seem content to play politics with the issue. Yet, given the powerful forces who are actively working to delay action, addressing it adequately will require bold leadership, not political dealing. The banner hang on Mount Rushmore is intended to press President Obama to be a leader in establishing science-based global warming policy not just here in the U.S., but also internationally at the UN climate change discussions to be held in Copenhagen this December.

The science is clear on the fact that we need to reduce our emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80-95% by 2050.  If we do less than that, we risk crossing a tipping point that will bring about the worst impacts of global warming – devastating floods, droughts, wildfires, and storms. 

Unfortunately, the House of Representatives recently passed a climate bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), that sets targets far below those mandated by science — largely because the fossil fuels industries were allowed a huge amount of influence in revising the legislation. The bill is so weak that it may actually spur a new generation of dirty coal and dangerous nuclear plants.

The excuse we’re given is that this legislation is all that is politically feasible.  But the climate doesn't care about what's politically feasible. If we don't take action in line with the science, we face catastrophic climate change.

In President Obama's inaugural address, he vowed to "restore science to its rightful place." ACES, which will soon be voted on in the Senate, falls woefully short of that mark. Sign our petition now to call on President Obama to honor his commitment to restoring science by being a true leader, not a politician.
 

Check out this slideshow of some pretty incredible images from Italy, where Greenpeace activists are holding protests at four different coal-fired power stations. The message is simple: As the G8 leaders meet in L'Aquila Italy, we're calling on them to take the urgent actions necessary to stop runaway climate change.

“The G8 heads of state must break the deadlock in the climate negotiations and stop blaming developing countries for their own inadequate climate policies,” said Greenpeace USA Executive Director, Phil Radford, on site at the G8 meeting in L’Aquila, Italy.

When Greenpeace's retailer analysis Carting Away the Oceans was first released in June 2008, twenty of the largest retailers in North America found their general seafood practices exposed to public scrutiny for the first time.  The original purpose of this project was to inform retailers of the impacts their seafood sales are having on marine life.  We also sought to use public awareness, shifting demand trends, and objective science to reward retailers that were willing to incorporate the principles of sustainable business into their seafood operations.

As we look back at the first year of Carting Away the Oceans, we can see a pronounced schism among the retailers that were targeted by this report.  While half of the stores have demonstrated at least some degree of progress, there remain ten retailers which have made no visible effort whatsoever to increase the sustainability of their seafood operations.  These industry laggards continue to wreak havoc on our environment, with no apparent regard for the health of our ecosystems or the values of their customers.

At this point, Greenpeace has little choice but to call out these gross offenders for who they are, and to strongly urge all consumers to avoid buying seafood from the following retailers:  A&P, Aldi, Costco, H. E. B., Meijer, Price Chopper, Publix, Supervalu, Trader Joe’s, and Winn-Dixie.

These companies have demonstrated a willful disregard for our oceans and for the growing demand among US consumers for sustainable fish and honest fish merchants.  In spite of good faith attempts of Greenpeace and other environmental and consumer groups, these retailers have failed to address the serious environmental issues which have been brought to their attention and have failed to respond to the urgency of the situation at hand. 

By contrast, Greenpeace is delighted to announce that several of the companies contained within this report have not only shown great improvement, but continue to move toward being the first large-scale “green” seafood retailer in the United States.  Interestingly, each store has found avenues within its unique business model to move towards a more sustainable way of sourcing and selling seafood.  Examples of this kind of innovation are evident in the actions of retailers like Wegmans, Whole Foods, and Target, each of which has made great strides in various areas.  While Whole Foods has increased its level of cooperation and initiative participation, Wegmans has developed a strong sustainable seafood policy, and Target has worked diligently to eliminate many unsustainable items from its inventory.

As Carting Away the Oceans moves forward, it is Greenpeace’s goal to continue to promote and reward progress among these seafood retailers.  Additionally, as we enter our second year of this work, it has become clear that some retailers simply do not respond to invitations to cooperate and positive reinforcement alone.  As has recently been made public in local and national media, Greenpeace is now engaged in a campaign directed at one of the most obstinate and egregious offenders: Trader Joe’s.

Scoring a measly one point out of ten and placing 17th out of 20 companies, Trader Joe’s is the worst national retailer appraised under Carting Away the Oceans (the three chains which somehow managed to perform even more poorly -- Meijer, HEB, and Price Chopper -- are all regional.)  In spite of an 18-month period of attempted cooperative engagement by Greenpeace, Trader Joe’s continues to operate with sickening disregard for the sanctity of our oceans.  Specifically:

•    Trader Joe's has no sustainable seafood policy and has yet to indicate that they have any interest in developing one.  This is in stark comparison to all the other national supermarket chains that recognize they have a responsibility to seafood sustainability.  Even conventional grocers like Safeway are miles beyond Trader Joe’s in this area.

•    Trader Joe's does not participate in any seafood sustainability initiatives whatsoever. Unlike many leading retailers, Trader Joe's does not partner with any scientific or environmental groups and doesn’t even bother to participate in sustainability initiatives led by industry groups, like the Food Marketing Institute.  In fact, Trader Joe’s is the only major nationwide seafood retailer that is not involved with seafood sustainability efforts in any way.

•    Trader Joe's does not label its seafood sufficiently.  This ensures that customers do not have adequate information to make educated decisions regarding their fish purchases.  Stating market names and farmed/wild is not enough – consumers deserve to know how their fish was caught or farmed so they can shop in an informed manner and not unwittingly contribute to ocean degradation.

•    Trader Joe's sells endangered red-list fish.  There are sustainable seafood items sold by Trader Joe’s as well, but only very educated seafood consumers are able to tell the difference.  Trader Joe’s needs to remove orange roughy, Chilean sea bass, and other items from their freezer so all of their customers can shop with confidence.

Trader Joe’s corporate leadership must realize that there is no future to these irresponsible business practices.  Until the company arrests their breakneck progress towards a future of empty nets and empty oceans, Greenpeace will continue to communicate our concerns directly to Trader Joe’s and to their customers in all ways possible.  Everything from public demonstrations and slapstick humor to online activism and singing telegrams will be used in this last-ditch effort to protect our planet.

Every day, our oceans suffer under the relentlessly growing demand for seafood.  Major retailers must begin to embrace environmental stewardship and sustainable business practices – not simply to safeguard the oceans, but also to ensure that they still have fish to sell in the coming decades.  And increasingly, retailers who have not adequately dealt with seafood sustainability will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage as consumers seek out retailers that share their concern about the fate of the oceans.

Still, after the last fish has been eaten and the sea has taken its last breath, it’s hardly the economics that will be weighing so heavily on our hearts.

Traitor Joe here. Greenpeace put a widget about me latest catch, Billie, on the interweb.

Now, I don't know what a widget is, exactly. At first, I thought it might be a new type of fishing gear. But, turns out it is a magical treasure that puts my lady, Billie, on any website you want.

All you landlovers are smart as paint! So, even though I figured out how to copy and paste the code into me blog below, you're not savvy enough to share it with your swashbuckling friends.

Insincerely yours,
Traitor Joe

A new Guardian arcticle today confirms what we wrote back in may: Exxon is still secretly funding global warming junk scientists.

According to the Guardian report:

Records show ExxonMobil gave hundreds of thousands of pounds to lobby groups that have published 'misleading and inaccurate information' about climate change. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000.

According to Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, at the London School of Economics, both the NCPA and the Heritage Foundation have published "misleading and inaccurate information about climate change."

On its website, the NCPA says: "NCPA scholars believe that while the causes and consequences of the earth's current warming trend is [sic] still unknown, the cost of actions to substantially reduce CO2 emissions would be quite high and result in economic decline, accelerated environmental destruction, and do little or nothing to prevent global warming regardless of its cause."

The Heritage Foundation published a "web memo" in December that said: "Growing scientific evidence casts doubt on whether global warming constitutes a threat, including the fact that 2008 is about to go into the books as a cooler year than 2007". Scientists, including those at the UK Met Office say that the apparent cooling is down to natural changes and does not alter the long-term warming trend.

Ward said, "ExxonMobil has been briefing journalists for three years that they were going to stop funding these groups. The reality is that they are still doing it. If the world's largest oil company wants to fund climate change denial then it should be upfront about it, and not tell people it has stopped."

Traitor Joe here. I figured out how to infiltrate the Greenpeace blogs. Ha, ha, ha. I figure, if I can deplete the oceans with my seafood purchasing practices, then, surely I can mess with the interweb and get a blog or two up on the Greenpeace site. It really was easy.

So, I'm here to tell you to just ignore what these environmentalists have to say about my stores. My freezer cases may be full of red list species, but I am asking you not to care. It is easy for me to trick my customers. I just tell them I care about the environment, throw on a hawaiian shirt so it looks like I am fun-loving and people just believe whatever I say. Suckers!

For your Fourth of July partying -- hurry up and get to Trader Joe's to stock up on red list seafood. My favorite fish, the chilean sea bass is a rare fish. There are so few left. I caught and mounted the last one I caught because it may have been the last.

 

 

Insincerely yours,
Traitor Joe

The latest edition of Greenpeace's "Guide to Greener Electronics" reveals that the world's biggest PC makers (Hewlett Packard, Dell and Lenovo) have failed to improve their low scores. For shame! All three companies received a penalty point for backtracking on their commitments to eliminate PVC plastic and brominated flame retardants from their products by the end of 2009.

The guide ranks the 17 top manufacturers of personal computers, mobile phones, TV's and games consoles according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change.

Greenpeace is calling on companies to eliminate BFRs and PVC from their product range. These substances are harmful throughout the entire lifecycle of a product; phase-out reduces pollution during the production and disposal of electronics and makes products capable of being recycled in a responsible manner.

It's technically feasible, and consumers want it too, but above all the electronics industry needs to clean up urgently as a matter of principle. Their e-waste is poisoning the poor.

Download the report for more information. You can also see how each company stacked up without downloading the entire report.

 

I am attaching a story which ran in our local paper this morning to bring your attention to the plight of our brothers and sisters in Western Alaska. This serious problem was recently exascerbated by a recent vote of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) that voted to increase the chinook (king) salmon by-catch for the pollock industry to 60,000 fish. That number is almost twice the amount of by-catch than the 10 year average of chinook caught by the industry.

Our brothers and sisters in Western Alaska are crying out for support. They will go hungry, and as winter begins to show its signs of arriving, I am affraid their plight will become even worse. They are, by this action, doing what we at Greenpeace have always done: peacefully protest. However, the difference is, it seems to me, is that for them it is a matter of survival immediately and personally.

Perhaps we can help by writing the Secretary of Commerce. His email address is: TheSec@doc.gov. Simply request that he reviews the decision made by the NPFMC to increase the chinook by-catch amount and bring that number down from 60,000 fish to at least 30,000 fish. When that number is reached, which is not likely, the pollock fishery would be forced to shut down for the season.

Please share this with your friends. Our people need our support. Perhaps they are taking a page out of our action book by doing this protest.

Troopers investigate Yukon River protest fishing YUKON RIVER: AVCP president says state should crack down on pollock fleet, not subsistence.

A Six boats left the village of Marshall on Friday night -- a time when subsistence fishing was supposed to be closed -- and caught roughly 100 kings, said Nick P. Andrew Jr., one of the fishermen and director of the Marshall-based Ohogamiut Traditional Council. Andrew said the state is neglecting the subsistence needs of the region and that the protesters gave their catch to local elders, widows and other villagers. The chinooks are a key source of food and cash along the Yukon, but Fish and Game predicted poor returns this year, banning commercial fishing altogether and sharply reducing subsistence opportunities.

Andrew said he hasn't heard from the authorities yet, but troopers said Tuesday that they're on the case. "If in fact a protest fishery occurred, I am very disappointed," said Colonel Gary Folger, wildlife troopers director. "We will conduct an investigation and if it discloses criminal behavior occurred, we will present our findings to the district attorney's office for review." The violation would be a misdemeanor. The state could also seize equipment.

The Association of Village Council Presidents, which represents 56 villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region, supported the protest. "Other villages that need king salmon should do the same thing," AVCP President Myron Naneng said this week. If the state is so worried about the king salmon run on the Yukon, it should have pushed for tougher restrictions on the Bering Sea pollock fleet that wastes thousands of king salmon a year, Naneng said. Fish and Game Commissioner Denby Lloyd sits on the council that overseas the Bering Sea fishery and voted in April to put an unprecedented cap on the number of salmon the fleet can waste. Regional leaders say the new restrictions go too easy on the trawlers. On Tuesday, Naneng called for Gov. Sarah Palin to replace Lloyd as Fish and Game commissioner, saying the state favors the giant Bering Sea pollock industry over the interests of village residents. Calls to speak to Lloyd on Tuesday were returned by John Hilsinger, the Department's director of commercial fisheries. He said he couldn't talk in detail about why the state didn't push for tighter restrictions on the pollock fleet because he wasn't involved in that discussion. But he noted the council's vote will put the first-ever cap on wasted salmon, one that would prevent massive bycatch like the 120,000 salmon that trawlers caught in 2007. The new cap could take effect in 2011.

"I know some people on the Yukon wish it was more than that, but it is definitely a step in the right direction," Hilsinger said. Camille Boliver, 73, is a retired fisherman who grew up in Marshall, a village of about 400. "Ever since I was young I had enough king salmons to feed my family all winter long," he said. But this year, most of the kings have already passed by the village and he only has three in his freezer. The protesting fishermen gave them to him, he said. Steve Hayes, who manages the Yukon chinook run for Fish and Game, said he sympathizes with fishermen concerned about bycatch but denounced the Marshall protest. "Not only are they jeopardizing the future returns, but it's unfair to the other people around them who are actually following the rules," he said. Talk of civil disobedience over the king salmon fishery had been simmering for weeks among regional leaders. The fishermen left the village Friday night carrying copies of a resolution by the local traditional council supporting the protest, Andrew said. "We were ready to send a message to the fishery managers, to the governor and to big business -- meaning the trawl fishery. That you waste, you know, you're allowed to waste all this fish. We only take a small fraction of the runs," he said. 'I'VE NEVER SAID THAT' Palin couldn't be reached for an interview Tuesday. But she wrote short updates on the region, and her rural advisor's trip to the Lower Yukon village of Emmonak, last week among her many dispatches on Twitter.

"Good update re Rural Advisor John Moller's recnt Emmonak trip, great news he reports; we'll twitter assuming press won't pick up good news," Palin wrote on Friday. Eight minutes later, she added another tweet: "John also met w/CNN reporter while in Emmonak & shared welcomed GOOD NEWS of region...as a result, highly unlikely interview will air" So what was this good news? "At the Federal Subsistence meeting in Emmonak last week, Nick Tucker reported that 50 percent of the residents have met subsistence needs and other 50 percent are confident they will meet their needs," Palin spokeswoman Sharon Leighow wrote in an e-mail Tuesday. But Tucker, an Emmonak resident who became a spokesman for the cash-poor region when his letter describing a local fuel and food crisis made national headlines, said Tuesday he never said that. He demanded a public apology from Palin's team for saying he did. "Ten times over, I've never said that. It was from one fisherman in Alakanuk," Tucker said in a short phone interview. "I do not believe that we in Emmonak -- Emmonak never said that." The governor's response? Moller, the rural advisor, is the one who knows about that, Leighow e-mailed. But he's on personal leave. "He is fishing today out of cell range," Leighow wrote. "John also said he talked with numerous residents who reported they have taken enough king salmon for their subsistence needs or would by the end of the season." WHAT ABOUT CHUM? Under a 2001 agreement between the U.S. and Canada, Alaska must deliver 45,000 king salmon up the Yukon and into Canada this year. For the past two years, the state has fallen short of those treaty goals and it's too early to tell if that will change this summer, said Hayes, the summer area manager.

To try and make it happen, Fish and Game closed the river to commercial king fishing and cut subsistence fishing in half. The first pulse of salmon is particularly important, with roughly 60 percent of those fish headed to Canada, Hayes said. The department also is closing subsistence fishing altogether in sections of the river as that first group of salmon pass through and is temporarily restricting gillnet sizes in some areas.

The state opened the lower Yukon to short windows of commercial chum fishing on Monday, but the Board of Fisheries voted Monday night that any kings that chum fishermen catch by accident can't be sold for profit, Hayes said. Asked why fishermen can't replace kings with more abundant chum salmon as a subsistence food, Andrew said it's not that simple. "Nothing compares to king salmon nutritionally because they carry oil that's needed for calories and for our well being... We can't substitute any species for that. That's our customary and traditional food," he said.