Greenpeace

Traitor Joe here. I’m greening up my act to save the oceans. I know you probably think this is another one of my sneaky scams, but I swear it’s true. You really can teach an old pirate new tricks.

You see, for months Greenpeace publicly pressured Trader Joe's supermarkets to adopt sustainable seafood purchasing policies throughout all of their stores in order to help save the oceans. The store ranked 17 out of the 20 when Greenpeace evaluated their seafood polices along with other supermarkets. It was clear, Trader Joe’s needed to do better.

After months of hearing from activists and shoppers like you about how important it is to stop destroying oceans for profit, Trader Joe’s finally turned over a new barnacle.

I’ve publicly announced that Trader Joe’s stores will remove red-listed seafood, implement a sustainable seafood policy, and work with third-party, science-based organizations to establish strong, lasting guidelines for ocean protection throughout our entire seafood operation.

I’ve seen the light! And, it’s all thanks to YOU for getting in my face and exposing my bad habits. I’m finally doing my part to help save the oceans with my seafood purchasing policies. Tell Trader Joe's that you're happy they've done the right thing by sending them a thank you note. If you do, it'll bring a ray of sunshine to this rusty ole' pirate.

Now, it’s time to sink my hooks into all the other supermarkets to get them to save the oceans too.

A forever changed,
Joe

 

Following the release of a new report, Greenpeace activists around the world are taking action to tell Nestle – the largest food and drink company in the world – to stop sourcing palm oil from rainforest destroyers.  Send your own message to Nestle and help spread the word!

The new report: “Caught Red Handed: How Nestle’s Use of Palm Oil is Having a Devastating Impact on Rainforest, the Climate and Orangutans” exposes how Nestle’s growing use of palm oil is linked to companies involved in the destruction of forests and peatlands in the Paradise Forest region of Southeast Asia.

The Paradise Forests are one of the most important, but highly threatened, tropical forests on the planet.  Boasting world-famous wildlife diversity, the rainforest islands of Paradise are home to critically endangered orangutans, Sumatran tigers, and spectacular birds found no where else on Earth.  But with a world-record breaking deforestation rate, there’s not much time to protect their habitat.



That’s why Greenpeace is hitting hard and moving fast.  Seven hours after the campaign launch this morning, Nestle has taken a small step in the right direction. In a statement released this morning from its headquarters in Switzerland, the food and drink giants said that it will stop buying palm oil directly from notorious rainforest destroyer Sinar Mas group.

But, that’s not the end of the story.  This action by Nestle is long-overdue and doesn’t address the big palm oil problems facing the company.  Nestle gets a lot more palm oil from Sinar Mas
and other destructive suppliers through traders--companies like Cargill that combine, refine and distribute palm oil to corporate customers.  So, with your help, Greenpeace will continue to push Nestle cut Sinar Mas from its supply chain completely and become a public advocate for peatland protection and a moratorium on forest destruction for palm oil.

In the meantime, clearly worried about their brand image, Nestle petitioned YouTube to remove the new Greenpeace campaign video "Have a break?" due to a copyright claim. If Nestle is really concerned about its corporate image, it should prioritize cutting its links to rainforest destruction instead!

This move has not stopped Greenpeace from spreading the message, you can now view the video on Vimeo below.

Note that the (startling!) video plays off Nestle’s popular, palm oil filled Kit Kat candy bar. Greenpeace is using this video outside of the U.S. because in this country, Kit Kat is licensed to and made by Hershey’s.  While the Hershey’s version of Kit Kat also includes palm oil, our new report does not investigate the company’s palm oil sourcing.  With that in mind, view the spoof advertisement to show Nestle you don’t like rainforest destruction or their meddling with YouTube videos!

And, most importantly, spread the word and send a message to Nestle today!

Have a break? from Greenpeace UK on Vimeo.

Well, somehow this cloudy day seems a little brighter as we look back on yesterday's victory up here in Vermont. Yesterday a whopping 26 members of the 30-member state Senate voted against continuing the license at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant for another 20 years after its scheduled closing in 2012. This is a huge victory for Vermonters and our clean energy future.



It was an epic day in many respects, and a testament to the strength of democracy here in Vermont. Hundreds jammed the statehouse, having traveled in terrible blizzard conditions to witness the Senate’s historic vote and make sure senators were hearing from their constituents. As the debate was underway, Senate pages scurried around delivering scores of messages from citizens to senators as they deliberated on the floor. In a memorable moment just before the vote, Senator Choate said, “Just in the past three hours I've been delivered 50 to 60 pink slips.” Our volunteers in the state house were working non-stop to make sure voters were contacting their Senators.

Every walk of life was represented there, farmers, schoolteachers, students young and old, business people, and activists who have been fighting the plant since before its construction. It was an inspiring moment for democracy as we saw the true power of grassroots action. When people stand up, raise their voices and organize we can win big victories for the planet and our neighbors. As we traveled around the state holding volunteer meetings, generating calls, letters, and emails, talking to business people, and learning from long-time community members the response was overwhelming.

When I was in Ludlow with a volunteer knocking on doors, one man asked why we were collecting letters. We explained that a group of citizens was meeting with a Senator the next day. “When, where?” he asked, and then showed up at 8:30AM on a Saturday to make sure his Senator would vote the right way. So did 24 other people; and the Senator had no choice. She voted no.

These stories are not unique, the vote yesterday was by a citizen legislature that listens to its people, and Greenpeace has worked hard to make sure those voices are heard. Our volunteers were tireless and committed, our goals were high, but we have just won a huge victory for the planet. Vermonters are tired of sitting in the shadow of this leaky old reactor and getting lied to and swindled by Entergy Louisiana.

The fight isn’t over. Entergy is a powerful corporation and has said they’re not done, and we aren’t either. Now we want to see the House show the same courage as the Senate and vote this session to retire Vermont Yankee. The vote yesterday was the first time a state legislative body has voted to retire a nuclear plant; we want the House to be the second.

This vote also sends a strong message to the nation and the world that the nuclear renaissance is dead on arrival. President Obama: Vermont knows that nuclear energy can’t be a part of our energy future. We need investments in renewable sources of energy to power our future and put people back to work. The US can follow Vermont’s leadership to the energy revolution America needs.

No Nukes (new or old)!

Jarred Cobb and John Deans
Vermont Organizers

"I have always believed that IT is the engine of an efficient economy; it also can drive a greener one." – Michael Dell, Forbes

Last month, Facebook announced that it was building its first data center, in Prineville, Oregon, in the northwest of the US. Unfortunately for the climate, we soon found out that instead of renewable energy, Facebook chose to operate its data center with energy from Pacific Power, a utility that is fueled primarily by coal. Last Friday, Greenpeace responded by challenging the company to become a climate champion and dump coal.

How the internet is powered is an issue not just for Facebook but for the entire IT industry. The industry holds many of the keys to reaching our climate goals by innovating internet based solutions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and increase energy efficiency. Technologies that enable smart grids, zero emissions buildings, and more efficient transport systems are central to efforts to combat climate change.

However, the IT industry's global environmental footprint is still growing — in fact, it's set to double by 2020. In 2008, The Climate Group and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) issued SMART 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age. The study showed the incredible efficiencies IT can create, but it also highlighted the massive footprint of the IT industry and predicted that because of the rapid economic expansion in places like India and China, among other causes, demand for IT services will quadruple by 2020.

How Facebook Should Lead
After we highlighted its growing footprint, Facebook issued a public response. It touted the significant energy efficiency of its data centers, but it also said that Pacific Power and its parent company PacifiCorp "has an energy mix that is weighted slightly more toward coal than the national average" of roughly 50%. This is not the full story. Facebook went to a state with only one existing in-state coal plant (that's shutting down within the decade) and instead decided to throw its lot with a utility that imports dirty coal from out of state.

Moreover, burning coal contributes the largest share of CO2 emissions globally, as well as contributing to increased asthma, acid rain, and mortality from other pollutants. Facebook's decision to choose a company primarily powered by coal over other cleaner sources of energy is a missed opportunity to strike a blow against this dirty fuel and drive a clean energy economy. We expect more from a company that was recently named the most innovative by Fast Company magazine.

In fact, other data center operators are realizing that efficiency is only part of the equation in dealing with company footprint. Yahoo similarly chose a cooler climate in Buffalo, NY for a data center in order to reduce the need for energy intensive cooling systems, but it chose its location based on access to lower carbon hydropower. Google has established Google Energy, which was recently granted its application to become a wholesale electricity buyer and seller. Google will hopefully use this standing to drive more renewable energy powered data centers.

Greenpeace is calling on Facebook, as we have with other IT companies, to:

• Commit to growing without using dirty coal power;
• Use its purchasing power to choose clean sources of electricity;
• Advocate for strong climate and energy policy changes at the local, national and international level to ensure that as its industry's appetite for energy increases, so does the supply of renewable energy;
• Share this information publicly on its website so its 350 million users know the company is a climate leader.

How You Can Get Involved
The IT industry's ability to lead and innovate are the reasons Greenpeace built on its work in the sector and began its Cool IT Campaign in 2009. The campaign uses direct company engagement and public pressure to push the ICT industry to put forward solutions to achieve economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions reductions and to become stronger advocates for policies that combat climate change and increase the use of renewable energy.

We want Facebook users to tell the company that you love using Facebook, but you want them to dump coal. You can get involved by joining one of the numerous Facebook groups that have sprung up to raise awareness about Facebook's choice of coal power for its Prineville data center. You can also use your networks and creativity to spread the word on other online social networks about the campaign. The internet is one of the greatest inventions& ever for creating social change. Let's use it.

With the Federal government shut down by back to back record breaking blizzards, members of Congress are huddled at home, wandering the internet, perhaps looking for a match made in heaven. Across town in the K Street frat houses, hoards of hungry lobbyists, unable to pursue their desired prey on foot, also resort to the internet, looking for love.

When you are a needy Senator, working tireless long hours to preserve and protect our Democracy and facing re-election, you don't have much time to find true love. And you have to be careful who you are seen with these days with all the prying eyes in Washington.

Today PolluterHarmony, a new online matchmaking service was launched to help the lobbyists and politicians find each other from the privacy of their own homes. PolluterHarmony.com, a dating service dedicated to helping polluter industry lobbyists, CEO's and propagandists match up with willing public officials, making it even easier to buy and sell influence, sabotage global warming solutions and derail our clean energy future.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, the new website was launched alongside an online advertising campaign. In coming weeks, Greenpeace organizers will also take to Capitol Hill to help promote PolluterHarmony's compatibility formula, which matches polluters and politicians based on their love of dirty energy, past environmental violations, and their ability to ignore the public health interests of real people.

Greenpeace launches PolluterHarmony at a time when dirty industry companies and their trade associations are spending record amounts on lobbyists and influence peddlers in an effort to undermine clean energy policy and global warming solutions. Serving these needy lobbyists and politicians is the least we can do.

The real life of lobbyists relationships with politicians made headlines last month when the news broke that dirty industry lobbyists helped Senator Lisa Murkowski write legislation aimed at stripping the Environmental Protection Agency of the authority to regulate greenhouse gasses. The lobbyists, former Bush officials Jeffrey Holmstead and Roger Martella, helped Murkowski craft the bill shortly after several of their clients made sizable donations to her campaign account. We are still awaiting a response from Senate Ethics Chairwoman Barbara Boxer to a letter sent requesting an immediate investigation into the matter.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates (in President Obama's words) with the Citizens United decision. Corporations are just like people, says the nation's highest court, so why shouldn't they have a matchmaking service to find their true love?

Here are some testimonials that PolluterHarmony is already working:

• Senator Blanche Lambert Lincoln of Arkansas has found multiple matches with Dirty Coal loving electric utilities like Southern Company, Duke and AEP, and lots of love from Big Oil.

• Representative Joe Barton of Texas, who has long shared a bed with his home state pals from Big Oil is leading the pack on House oil contributions. Now Barton seems to be harvesting the fruit of his labors to derail global warming laws with newfound love from Dirty Coal.

• Senator Lisa Murkowski of Big Oil Alaska is spending her time in the lower 48 finding lots of Dirty Coal love. Murkowski is neck and neck with Senator Dorgan as the leading recipient of coal and utility campaign contributions.
  
  And why not, she is spending her time trying to strangle the EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act, a law that oil companies and utilities have violated over and over in recent years and punished with millions of dollars in fines. Murkowski's suitors have million$ of rea$on$ to love her attack on the EPA and the Clean Air Act.

Corporate violators of the Clean Air Act

Duke Energy has been busted by the EPA for Clean Air Act violations.

ExxonMobil for instance was found guilty of over 2000 Clean Air Act violations and fined millions in penalties.

Chevron has violated the Clean Air Act on numerous occasions and is now being investigated in Alaska for knowingly violating air pollution permits.

ConocoPhillips has also been found guilty of violating the Clean Air Act and paid big fines.

If you are a politician looking for your very own lobbyist love affair or vice versa, check these handy field guides:

OpenSecrets has records of 997 registered Electric utility lobbyists with spending of over $140 million in 2009.

OpenSecrets Electric Utility campaign contributions

OpenSecrets has tracked 790 Big Oil lobbyists and over $160 million in lobbying cash for 2009

OpenSecrets Big Oil campaign contributions

OpenSecrets Coal Mining campaign cash

FollowTheOilMoney

FollowTheCoalMoney


This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.

In last night's State of the Union address, President Obama said that "(t)o create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country." Despite his statement, the President knows better.

Nuclear power is neither safe nor clean. There is no such thing as a "safe" dose of radiation and just because nuclear pollution is invisible doesn't mean it's "clean." For years nuclear plants have been leaking radioactive waste from underground pipes and radioactive waste pools into the ground water at sites across the nation. Mr. Obama was prompted to address the issue when radioactive contamination was found in drinking wells and off the nuclear plant site at Exelon's Braidwood nuclear plant.

In 2006, when the President was serving as a senator from Illinois, he introduced the Nuclear Release Notice Act to address the radioactive contamination of groundwater at several nuclear reactors in his state. Unfortunately, the bill never became law.

Rather than hold nuclear power plant owners accountable for the uncontrolled and unmonitored leaks, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) handed the problem over to the nuclear industry's lobbyists. Despite the fact that tritium releases to groundwater violate the terms of the nuclear plant's license, the NRC has failed to exercise its regulatory authority. Instead, NRC has allowed the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) to create a voluntary industry program to deal with the tritium contamination.

Since then, the trickle of operators of nuclear plants acknowledging that they've contaminated the ground water at their sites has grown into a deluge. The nuclear plants that have admitted leaking radioactive hydrogen or tritium into the groundwater include: Braidwood, Byron & Dresden in Ilinois; Indian Point & Fitzpatrick in New York; Yankee Rowe & Pilgrim in Massachusetts; Three Mile Island & Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania; Callaway in Missouri; Oyster Creek in New Jersey; Hatch in Georgia; Palo Verde In Arizona; Perry in Ohio; Point Beach in Wisconsin; Salem in Delaware; Seabrook in New Hampshire; Watts Bar in Tennessee; Wolf Creek in Kansas; Connecticut Yankee and most recently Vermont Yankee. This NY Times article explains it all.

This list is likely incomplete and still growing. It remains difficult for the public to track which nuclear plants are leaking radioactive contamination because the NRC has failed to update its website since October of 2007 when it abdicated its authority to the industry's voluntary initiative.

The President was then less than pleased with the industry's voluntary regulation of radioactive leaks. Then Senator Obama responded that "(w)hile it's encouraging that the nuclear industry recognizes it has a special responsibility to keep communities informed of tritium leaks, the voluntary guidelines recommended by the Nuclear Energy Institute would still allow tritium leaks to occur without the public ever finding out about it. The nuclear industry already has a voluntary policy, and it hasn't worked."

Obama's comments now seem prophetic. Recently, just one week after the government regulators extended the operating license for the 40-year-old Oyster Creek reactor in New Jersey, the plant owner admitted leaking radioactive contamination into the plants ground water. This most recent revelation has prompted several members of Congress to ask the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the leaks and how regulators at the NRC have mishandled the issue.

According to Congressman Ed Markey, who over sees the NRC, "(u)nder current regulations, miles and miles of buried pipes within nuclear reactors have never been inspected and will likely never be inspected." Markey concluded that "(t)his is simply unacceptable. As it stands, the NRC requires-at most-a single, spot inspection of the buried piping systems no more than once every 10 years. This cannot possibly be sufficient to ensure the safety of both the public and the plant."

If President Obama truly wants a clean energy economy and the jobs that come with it, he should abandon the failed policies of the past. Nuclear power is a dirty and dangerous distraction from the clean energy future the President has promised America.

This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.

It's a great day to be a fish!

In an unprecedented policy shift, the Target Corporation – one of the largest retailers in the United States and a direct competitor with Walmart – has just today announced the elimination of all farmed salmon products from its stores.  Fresh, frozen, shelf-stable, and smoked items will from here on out exclusively be made with wild Alaskan salmon — no exceptions.  Even its sushi department, which is notoriously the most stubborn part of this industry when it comes to change (thus the existence of this website), is in the process of phasing out the last bits of its farmed salmon.

While this act is truly staggering in its magnitude and its implications for the seafood retail industry, of equal importance are the reasons behind Target’s decision.  The company does not mince words when it comes to why they have made this transition — Target’s communications department clearly states that the company is not interested in supporting an industry that has done such harm to our marine ecosystems.  Their press release spells it out quite simply:  “Target is taking this important step to ensure that its salmon offerings are sourced in a sustainable way that helps to preserve abundance, species health and doesn’t harm local habitats… Many salmon farms impact the environment in numerous ways – pollution, chemicals, parasites and non-native farmed fish that escape from salmon farms all affect the natural habitat and the native salmon in the surrounding areas.”

This move will undoubtedly shake the salmon farming industry to its very core.  Target, after all, is not exactly a high-end gourmet market – rather, it’s a price leader that specializes in providing quality products for low prices.  How, then, does a market that worships price-driven competition manage to eschew an item that embodies the very concept of bargain seafood?

With help from Greenpeace and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Target has opened the door to a new era of seafood – one that dares to question tired old paradigms that cannot withstand this kind of innovation.  Retailers which have parroted the weary excuse of farmed salmon filling an otherwise unattainable price point will now be exposed as complacent rather than pragmatic.  If a low-cost hypermarket like Target, which needs to sell salmon for $6.99 a pound, can manage to transition entirely to wild, sustainable product, how can the Whole Foods clones of the world defend their reliance on environmentally dubious farmed products that sell for over twice the price?

Conventional farmed salmon is caught between a rock and a hard place, and it is not a moment too soon.  Salmon farms have been the source of countless problems over the past decade – diseases in Chilean farms rip through penned animals like hot knives through butter; parasite swarms in Canadian farms threaten the very survival of co-habiting wild salmon runs, not to mention the essence of Pacific Northwest cultural integrity.

Salmon are the backbone of who we are here on the west coast.  It is the wild salmon runs that bring nutrients from the sea to the land, that fertilize the river banks and feed the yawning bears.  If we allow this, our greatest legacy, to perish at the hands of a small group of cash-blinded eco-criminals, it is doubtful that we will ever find another source of such selfless bounty.

We need courage, innovation, and foresight if we are to create a wise and responsible seafood industry that can steward our oceans in the coming decades, and it’s companies like Target that are leading the charge.  Remember this day — this was the day that we took our salmon back.

Last week it was revealed that Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska worked with big polluter lobbyists to draft the Dirty Air Act — a.k.a. the Murkowski amendment — which would strip the EPA's authority to regulate global warming pollution from stationary sources like coal plants, oil refineries, and factories, authority granted to the agency by the Clean Air Act. This move to protect the profits of polluting industries instead of the planet is unaccpetable, and we are asking everyone to write to their Senator now to urge them to vote against Murkowski's big polluter amendment.

Murkowski’s spokesman, Robert Dillon, is now claiming that they have secured a Democratic cosponsor for the Dirty Air Act. Kate Sheppard, an investigative reporter from Mother Jones, speculated that five Democrats were the most likely to have partnered with Murkowski on the amendment.

All of these Democrats have a history of taking polluter campaign cash, so today we sent a letter to each of them asking them to make it clear where they stand. We also released a report detailing the campaign contributions that these five Democratic Senators have taken from the lobbying clients of Jeffrey Holmstead and Roger Martella, the DC influence-peddlers accused of funneling campaign cash to Senator Murkowski at the same time that they were pushing and helping write the Dirty Air Act.

• Mary Landrieu of Louisiana (letter PDF)
  Since 1997, Senator Mary Landrieu has directly received $152,668 from these two lobbyists, their firms, their climate legislation clients, their PACs and employees.
• Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas (letter PDF)
  Since 1997, Senator Blanche Lincoln, who is the Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee and has jurisdiction over clean energy legislation moving through the Senate, has directly received $139,766 from these two lobbyists, their firms, their climate legislation clients, their PACs and employees.
• Jim Webb of Virginia (letter PDF)
  Since 2005, Senator Jim Webb has directly received $25,700 from these two lobbyists, their firms, their climate legislation clients, their PACs and employees.
• Byron Dorgan of North Dakota (letter PDF)
  Since 1997, Senator Byron Dorgan has directly received $119,446 from these two lobbyists, their firms, their climate legislation clients, their PACs and employees.
• Ben Nelson of Nebraska (letter PDF)
  Since 1997, Senator Ben Nelson has directly received $65,770 from these two lobbyists, their firms, their climate legislation clients, their PACs and employees.

All told, these five Senators have directly received $503,350 from these two lobbyists, their firms, their climate legislation clients, their PACs and employees, since 1997. Read the full report here.

We can’t let polluter lobbyists and their allies in Congress gut the Clean Air Act. Take action now to tell your Senator to vote NO on the Murkowski amendment.

*Note: All data for this report comes from FEC records obtained by www.opensecrets.org. Contributions received from Jeffrey Holmstead, Roger Martella, the PACs and employees of Bracewell Giuliani, Sidley Austin, the National Alliance of Forest Owners, the Alliance of Food Associations, the Ameren Corporation, Arch Coal, CSX Corporation, Duke Energy, Edison Electric, the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, Energy Future Holdings, Mirant Corporation, the Portland Cement Association, Progress Energy, the Salt River Project, and Southern Company were all included in this report.

As I look forward to 2010 and embrace the year ahead, I can’t help but get a little nostalgic. I find myself looking back at the last year and reminiscing about where we’ve been and what we’ve accomplished together.

It was my first year as Greenpeace’s Executive Director, and I started my job in typical Greenpeace style - by locking myself to a crane ladder high above Washington, DC to call attention to world leaders about the dangers of global warming.

That was just the first of many actions Greenpeace took this year to highlight the dire urgency of global warming. We “installed” wind turbines in "the Windy City," hung banners off of bridges in Pittsburgh, created a climate crime scene outside the Chamber of Commerce in Washington DC, and unveiled 50,000 of your signatures in a giant banner underneath President Obama’s helicopter as he returned home from Oslo.

And of course, Greenpeace activists scaled Mount Rushmore to hang President Obama’s face alongside the faces of the former presidents with the message that read, “America Honors Leaders, not Politicians: Stop Global Warming.” The eleven brave activists recently convicted of climbing Mt. Rushmore will each pay a fine of $460 and will perform community service in the National Park system. One activist, Matt Leonard, served two days in jail because of his past civil disobedience work.

I’m proud of our activists and everything they did in 2009, but as I look back over the year, I’m even more impressed by what YOU have been able to accomplish this year:

•    Kimberly-Clark agreed not to cut ancient forests to make Kleenex and other products and set a new standard for the global paper industry.
•    The House of Representatives passed landmark chemical security legislation.
•    Timberland and Nike, after receiving hundreds of comments from you, helped force cattle and leather industry giants to protect the Amazon Rainforest.
•    Clorox Company announced plans to convert all of its U.S. factories from dangerous chlorine gas to safer chemical processes.

I can’t emphasize enough the enormous impact of these victories, or thank you enough for helping to achieve them.

I know that 2010 will bring many challenges our way, and I’m confident that Greenpeace is uniquely equipped to deal with them. But we can’t succeed without your help!

My New Year’s resolution is to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, pass chemical security legislation in the Senate and to convince Trader Joe’s to listen to their customers and adopt sustainable seafood policies. Will you help me make my New Year’s resolutions come true?

I can’t thank you enough for your support in 2009, and I’m really looking forward to all that 2010 has in store for us.

--Phil

Tomorrow is the last day of the UN climate summit and, by all accounts, the negotiations have descended into complete chaos. The voice of civil society has been increasingly marginalized. There has been no leadership from the developed countries that created the climate crisis. The pleas for survival by developing countries have been ignored. So we've taken action to demand leadership in the final 24 hours in order to save these talks and establish a real deal in Copenhagen.


Just moments ago, Greenpeace’s very own Head of State arrived at the Queen’s gala dinner for real Heads of State, 120 of whom are now here for the climate talks. Our distinguished faux-world leader and her entourage entered the dinner and held up two banners reading “Politicians Talk, Leaders Act.” We're sitting here watching coverage of the action on Danish news as I type.

They were there to represent the millions of people around the world who want a fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty. World leaders risk condemning the world to climate chaos if they don’t take decisive action to steer the climate negotiations in the right direction on the final day of talks.

We also projected the message " Don't betray our children's future" onto the Parliament building where the dinner was held.


The climate negotiations are on the verge of massive failure, but Heads of State still have just under twenty-four hours to turn the situation around. The rich world must commit to deeper emissions cuts and funding for developing country to lower their own emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change that are already being experienced. Demand leadership from rich countries by joining the over 13 million people who have already signed this petition calling for a real deal here in Copenhagen.

As a bonus, here's a video the activists shot in their car on the way to the dinner (apparently, their car was just ahead of Hilary Clinton's in the motorcade). This was livestreamed from a camera-phone they had with them, but it's also kinda arty in a way.