Greenpeace

This post is by Molly Dorozenski, a Greenpeace USA media officer who is on the ground in Louisiana bearing witness to the impacts of the BP Deepwater Disaster and oil spill.

Last Friday, I found myself in Pensacola, Florida getting ready to greet the oil as it hit Florida’s white sand beaches. But just as I arrived, we started hearing reports that the oil had arrived in unprecedented amounts in Barataria Bay, and the barrier islands that served as breeding grounds for the area’s birds.

The very first photographs of oil-covered pelicans had started to hit the newspapers. As BP’s latest attempt to stem the oil flow seemed to be succeeeding, we were seeing the beginning of the worst effects of the oil spill we had seen yet — plainly suffering wildlife that cannot be protected or rescued fast enough.

River Shay walks his dog Smash in the front yard of his Grand Isle, Louisiana house planted with crosses with the names some of the marine life, seafood dishes and recreational activiites that are being lost due oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico. © Jose-Luis Magana/Greenpeace View more images of the oil spill on Flickr

Grand Isle is a vacation and weekend fishing spot for Louisianans, a long pretty stretch of sand scattered with small motels and cottages with cheerful names and marinas at either end. What would be a place of leisure has been totally transformed — a newly-erected symbolic graveyard for everything this community has lost, courtesy (they say) of BP and the federal government: “Sandcastles,” “Seafood Gumbo,” “Sea Turtles” “Redfish” — dozens of white crosses with different labels. Down at the marina, there are folks who have been coming to Grand Isle for years — they can no longer fish or swim, but they’re coming here anyway. They’re dumbstruck. The beaches of Grand Isle are patroled by BP and closed to the public — you can see the workers from a walkway at Grand Isle State Park where locals and media have lined up to watch oil shoveled endlessly into bags.

A little ways off by boat — not more than a 10-minute boat ride — you can visit Queen Bess Island, home to the endangered Brown Pelican, a bird that has recovered from past population problems related to pesticides. When we visited, the island was surrounded by booms and boats couldn’t get very close, but you could count probably 10-15 pelicans that were partly or fully covered in oil. Many of them would not survive the night. Since we’re not trained to rescue them ourselves, we called in what we had seen to wildlife rescue — we know that teams are going back and forth to the islands, but it’s frustrating to see no rescue teams there. You just feel helpless.

At Grand Terre, a bigger nearby island, the beach was covered in oil.  It was on the sand, and there were thick pools of it along the edge in the water. Dirty sorbent booms had washed up on the shores, totally saturated in oil. Again, we saw no BP workers — where are the 20,000 workers that President Obama says are out here cleaning up this mess? And aren’t we all tired of cleaning up after dirty energy? When will we have an energy policy that protects the things we love from catastrophes like this? This has to be the moment of change, unless we want to see this and feel like this again and again.

The locals here know that it’s going to be a long time, decades, before Grand Isle is the place that they remember. This is the new Gulf Coast. You can’t clean it up much at all, and the little that could be done isn’t being done fast enough. As the oil spreads through the Gulf tainting the waters, the islands, and the wildlife, BP and the President stand up at press conferences and tell us they’re doing all they can. But we’ve seen the truth and it’s not pretty — it’s a failed energy policy, a failed response, and a failure of humanity.

Today at high noon, Greenpeace, along with Public Citizen, Friends of the Earth, Energy Action Coalition, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, 350.org, Center for Biological Diversity and Hip Hop Caucus, articulated the outrage Americans everywhere are feeling by making a citizen’s arrest of BP CEO Tony Haward.

Today we mark the 46^th day of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, at this point the worst in American history. Millions of gallons of oil and toxic dispersants have entered the delicate ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, BP CEO Tony Hayward recently complained that he wants his "life back." He has since recognized the selfishness behind his statement, but what have we, the concerned citizens, realized since this incident?

Rob Weissman, president of Public Citizen, center, speaks flanked by Rev. Lennox Yearwood, of Hip Hop Caucus, left, and Phil Radford of Greenpeace. View more images from the citizens arrest protest on our Flickr page.

What have we done to make sure that this doesn’t happen again?

Have we learned any lessons from this and other environmental catastrophes?

It appears as though our nation is becoming ‘used’ to oil spills. Ixtoc I in the 70’s, Exxon Valdez in the 80’s, Mega Borg in the 90’s, and now the Deepwater Horizon. All told, hundreds of millions of gallons of oil have terrorized our waterways and countless lives have been affected by these spills.

Why do we still permit this industry to thrive (Note: BP has legally escaped paying $172,508,633 in royalties to US taxpayers on leases it operates in the Gulf of Mexico, but has made $6 billion in profits over the first quarter of this year) despite the fact that the consequences of their actions remain clear? Isn’t one environmental disaster enough to stop the drills?

We stood in front of BP's DC offices and listed charges against the corporation, including worker safety and environmental violations, price-gouging, negligence, and the inability to adequately respond to the mounting catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding communities. The charges culminated in a finding of criminal negligence and the presentation of a prison jumpsuit fitted for CEO Tony Hayward.

Hayward oversees a company that is responsible for causing the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. BP has one of the worst records of environmental and worker safety violations of any oil company operating in the U.S. It has paid $730 million in fines and settlements for environmental and worker safety violations, was currently on probation for felony environmental violations, and has been found guilty of manipulating energy markets.

BP’s record is clear. Our response must be as well.

Eleven people are no longer alive because of BP’s negligent behavior. At least 491 birds, 227 turtles, and 27 mammals, including dolphins, have been found dead. The true extent of the environmental damage won’t be known for years. BP must be held accountable for its actions immediately.

Much of the press coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill in the Gulf describes the disaster as "unprecedented" when, in fact, it is not. Thirty one years ago today — June 3, 1979 — Pemex's Ixtoc I exploratory well suffered a blowout resulting in the largest peace-time oil spill in history. Some 3.3 million barrels (138,600,000 gallons) of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico over a period of almost 11 months until the well was finally capped on March 23, 1980.

Greenpeace has been bearing witness to the BP Deepwater Disaster and oil spill for the past month. Click here to read more blogs, view videos and more images.

The Ixtoc exploratory well blowout occurred in 160 feet of water. Yet much is being made of the fact that the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout that killed 11 people and is still gushing oil into the Gulf occurred in 5,000 feet of water. Indeed, the Obama Administration is putting the brakes on new exploratory drilling in deep water, but is issuing permits for new drilling in shallow waters. This policy move misses some important points.  

First, the Minerals Management Service issued a report in 2007 that shows blowouts are relatively common. As this report shows, from 1992 to 2006, there were 5,671 wells drilled in the federal waters of the Outer Continental Shelf, and 39 blowouts occurred, or one blowout per every 387 wells drilled.  

Second, the report shows that 19 of the 39 blowouts in this period occurred in water depths of zero to 200 feet.  

Of course the depth of the Deepwater Horizon blowout makes any response challenging. But stopping the flow of oil in shallow waters may not be any less challenging, as the Ixtoc blowout shows. The Timor Sea blowout in 2009 occurred in 250 feet of water, and oil spilled for more than ten weeks until the fifth attempt to drill a relief well was successful.  

The bottom line is that if we continue to drill off our coasts blowouts will happen, failsafe technologies and redundancies will fail, and oil will spill into the ocean. As conventional oil supplies are exhausted and oil companies turn to ultra-deep drilling and drilling in Alaska’s arctic and other non-conventional areas, the dangers and threats posed by oil drilling will increase by orders of magnitude. The issue is not deep water oil drilling versus shallow water oil drilling. The issue is oil drilling, period.  

Without a full ban on all new exploratory drilling in US waters, blowouts, death and large oil spills still threaten America’s coastlines.

President Obama pledged last week that under his administration all oil drilling will be safe. Greenpeace challenges the notion of  “safe oil drilling” based on this fact: At every stage of the oil lifecycle — from exploration to production and transportation — spills and leaks are commonplace occurrences. Even if not a drop of oil spilled, the oil is eventually burned, which contributes to global warming. From cradle to grave, oil brings with it enormous health, safety and environmental consequences. There’s just no such thing as “safe oil drilling.”

Luckily, we can get off oil. Greenpeace will be releasing its Advanced Energy [R]evolution report next week, showing how the US can reduce its oil consumption 80 percent by 2050 without turning to coal or nuclear power, but by relying on conservation and renewable forms of energy.

Pemex’s Ixtoc, BP’s Deepwater Horizon, and the Montara blowout in the Timor Sea are just three in a long list of tragic oil disasters that could have been avoided if the world had weaned itself from oil. The 31st anniversary of the Ixtoc blowout — while oil is still spilling into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s Deepwater Horizon — should be impetus enough to start an energy revolution here at home.

Even as BP's wellhead continues to spew its toxic brew, defacing miles of pristine coastline, Congress is apparently powerless to conjure a legislative fix for the threats to America's coasts. We need to learn a deep and profound lesson about what exactly our national priorities are.

Greenpeace has been bearing witness to the BP Deepwater Disaster and oil spill for the past month. Click here to read more blogs, view videos and more images.

The most recent “comprehensive climate legislation,” the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act, is not the robust legislative protection for America’s coastlines that we so clearly need. Giveaways to the fossil fuels industries, nuclear subsidies, and junk emissions reduction targets are not the way to move forward.

While we still have no clear estimate of the total impact from the BP Oil Spill on the Gulf’s fragile ecology, fisheries, or tourism, we continue to wait for guidance from our elected officials. And though the picture may be bleak, at least one Senator has seen an opportunity to pivot from this disaster and help to end our disastrous dependence on dirty fossil fuels.

While the legislation does not call for a complete ban on drilling all of America’s coasts, we stand behind S.3433, the Clean Coasts and Efficient Cars Act of 2010, introduced by Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Congress should act to protect all of America’s coasts, including Alaska and the entire Gulf of Mexico. This legislation begins moving us toward that goal by protecting the coasts of the Atlantic, Pacific, Central Gulf, and Eastern Gulf of Mexico from a catastrophe like the BP Deepwater Disaster, which has already spilled millions of barrels of oil in the Gulf. Significantly, the bill recognizes an important step we can take to reduce demand for oil — raising fuel economy standards for gasoline powered vehicles.

Although we use 25% of all oil produced, the United States’ oil reserves represent only 3% of the global total. The result is that we already import about two-thirds of the oil we use. Because we simply do not have enough oil, offshore drilling cannot increase energy security - but more drilling can and will destroy ecosystems and coastal economies. A strategy to increase energy security for this generation and the future will only succeed if the focus is on developing renewable energy, increasing efficiency and reducing oil demand in our transportation sector. By increasing fuel economy, this legislation will reduce our demand for dirty oil, whether it is obtained from foreign countries or risky offshore drilling.

Sanders’ bill would set a fuel economy standard of 55 miles per gallon, up from an average of 35 mpg that American carmakers must achieve by 2030 under current law.

In Europe, by contrast, cars already get the equivalent of 42 mpg and by 2020 cars in Europe will be required to get at least 65 mpg. Why, in a rich and industrious country like America, can’t we also have the benefits (both environmental and price-wise) of such comprehensive legislation?

The time to act on climate change is now. We will let you know how you can support Sen. Sanders’ bill in the weeks to come. In the meantime, write to Congress and tell them to put a stop to dangerous and expensive offshore drilling off all our coasts.

The news today out of Washington has been somewhat promising, but these are small steps in a very long march towards a clean energy economy — an economy with none of the potential for massive ecological destruction such as we've seen in the Gulf.

Greenpeace has been bearing witness to the BP Deepwater Disaster and oil spill for the past month. Click here to read more blogs, view videos and more images.

Minerals Management Service (MMS) Director Elizabeth Birnbaum submitted her resignation letter this morning. Also today the Obama Administration renewed a moratorium in the pristine Beaufort and Chukchi seas in Alaska for the next 6 months, canceled the pending lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and Virginia, and suspended action on 33 wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Greenpeace welcomes any and all investigations of the root causes of the BP Deepwater Disaster. Furthermore, Greenpeace welcomes the President’s call to develop clean, renewable sources of energy. These are all positive steps.

But preventing another massive ecological disaster can only be guaranteed by a complete and permanent legislative ban on all new drilling off of America’s coasts.

To put today's news into perspective: The Washington Post is reporting that BP's oil spill in the Gulf is officially the largest in American history, and the company’s latest round of bungling attempts at stopping this massive flow have not been successful. Enough is enough.

In order to move forward from this tragedy in a meaningful way, Congress must:

• Ban all new offshore drilling so that no more of America's coastlines are threatened with ecological catastrophes such as the BP Deepwater Disaster and oil spill;
• Place stricter regulations on extractive industries (coal and oil) to make them safer and more accountable for the damage they cause;
• And pass legislation that jumpstarts the clean energy revolution.

Also, Arctic Alaska must be taken off the table permanently. Harsh weather and ice-infested waters are the norm in the region, and the risk of blowouts is even higher than in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil spill “clean-up” in the remote environment, where the nearest Coast Guard station is a thousand miles away, is even more impossible than it is in the relatively more hospitable and accessible Gulf. As a result of today’s announcements, Arctic Alaska is out of harm's way for a mere 6 months. Shell’s Arctic drilling threatens distinctive species such as polar bears, walrus, seals and whales, as well as the Alaskan Native communities who have relied on them for culture and subsistence for millennia. Alaska’s Arctic and its inhabitants deserve better.

We can not afford another catastrophe on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy — especially in Alaska where oil spill response infrastructure is virtually non-existent. We're learning in the Gulf that there is no such thing as cleaning up an oil spill.

Half measures, loopholes, and giveaways to polluters won't cut it this time. Now is the moment for action.

Because of today’s announcements concerning the suspension of pending leases in Alaska, we have happily closed our online petition calling on Interior Secretary Salazar to ban Arctic drilling. But your members of Congress still need to hear from you. Sign our petition to Congress telling them that now is the time for a permanent ban on ALL new offshore drilling.

From the Gulf Coast to the West Coast to the East Coast, Greenpeace activists are out in full force to send the Obama Administration a message: Ban Arctic Drilling!

As the BP Deepwater Disaster and oil spill has made plain for all to see, we desperately need to move away from dirty, dangerous fossil fuels like oil and toward clean, green renewable energy. Unfortunately, even as the Gulf continues to fill up with filthy crude oil, the Obama Administration is intent on going ahead with more offshore drilling, a move that will prolong our addiction to oil rather than end it.

In fact, despite the moratorium the administration said it had placed on all new offshore drilling permits, we have now learned that the Interior Dept.’s Minerals Management Service has actually approved several new offshore drilling permits since April 20th, when BP’s rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded and sank, leading to several million gallons (and counting) of oil being spilled. Worse yet, most of these new permits were given the same environmental exemptions as BP was given for the Deepwater Horizon.

And of course, the administration is so far allowing Shell to move ahead with its plans to drill in the far more ecologically sensitive Arctic region this summer. As you might have seen already, several of our activists sent a loud and clear message to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar earlier this week when he was down in Louisiana by painting “Arctic Next?” on a Shell support ship soon to be headed for the Arctic.

But we didn’t stop there. Salazar was called before the Natural Resources Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives today, and our activists were there with a similar message: “Salazar: Ban Arctic Drilling.” Like the painting on the Shell ship, the signs these activists were holding were painted with some of the dirty crude that has been spewing into the Gulf of Mexico for the past month.

Here’s an awesome photo of Sec. Salazar and Deputy Interior Sec. David Hayes turning around to read our activists’ signs:


We had a message for Salazar’s boss, too. President Obama was out here in the Bay Area today campaigning on behalf of Sen. Barbara Boxer, and several of us went down there to send the exact same message to the Pres. Here’s a pic of Obama’s motorcade whizzing by our banner:


So, Obama and Salazar have gotten our message, we know that much. But that doesn’t mean our work is done. We need as many folks as possible to be hammering this message home. Help stop the next oil spill: write to Sec. Salazar right now and tell him to stop Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic.

Jo Billups is a friend and supporter of Greenpeace who lives in the Gulf region.

I was born in New Orleans and grew up on the Bayou. I spent my childhood looking at alligators and being on the river. I used to go fishing on these waters, and my dad had a camp at South Pass.

The Gulf is such a big part of my life. That’s why the oil spill has been so hard.

I feel betrayed. BP should never have been allowed to put our communities and our ecosystem at risk like this. Eleven people are no longer with us because of offshore drilling. All our fishermen, shrimpers and oystersmen are out of work. Our culture is in ruins.  

The fishing community

Most people in the fishing community live paycheck to paycheck. They’ve been working on their boats all year and investing everything they have into them. Now, as soon as fishing and oyster season opens, they can’t fish. The spill has stopped the fishing industry. The fish are starting to wash up dead.    

Our community is centered around the beach life and the Gulf. So many people make their living off it and they’ve done it for generations. The fishermen are fishermen because their fathers and grandfathers were fishermen. It’s the same for the shrimpers and the oystermen. Who knows if they’ll ever be able to return to life as they knew it on the Gulf. An entire way of life has been devastated.  

The impacts

Over this last month I’ve gone from walking the beaches for pleasure to walking the beaches in search of dead animals and animals in need. There is a split reality here. You’ve got people lying on the beach in bathing suits, and 60 feet away there are dead sea turtles and people in hazmat suits. You’ve got people who know it’s dangerous and won’t get near the water, and you’ve got people coming down for vacation.  

There’s a lot of denial. BP just paid the Biloxi Chamber of Commerce $500,000 for a campaign that says “Come on down, the water’s fine.” But the reality is there’s a lot of fear and anxiety. The tourist industry is beginning to suffer. Memorial Day is coming up and a lot of the hotels are not booked.    

I don’t think I’ll ever swim in the Gulf of Mexico again, or eat fish from the Gulf. Some people are still at the beaches and the seafood is still being served at the restaurants, but I haven’t seen any tests being done. They’re going to need to do a lot of testing to ensure that fish is safe to eat.

Everybody will tell you that it smells like kerosene. People are coughing and complaining of headaches, dizziness, and nausea. The air is toxic, and we’re being told that we’re not smelling anything.

From the minute the leak began BP said it wasn’t leaking. From the very first day BP has been lying about this. We need to constantly combat the misinformation. BP has people cleaning the beaches of dead animals, like it didn’t happen. Our beaches have never been cleaner. They won’t give us the information. They won’t give us a true animal count. They’re doing such a huge campaign to make it seem like it’s not as bad as it is.

Hurricane season

But this is happening. The Bayou Region is being destroyed, and now we are approaching hurricane season. People aren’t even talking about this yet, and it could be bigger than anything we’ve seen. It won’t take a big hurricane to push this oil inland. It won’t take much to push this up to drinking water sources, up the Mississippi.

Everyone down here is just coming back from Katrina, and a hurricane would be devastating. If we get a 30 foot tidal wave of oil there’s no way to tell the damage it will do. We saw the damage water alone that was done after Katrina, and now we’re adding oil and dispersants to the mix. No one knows how bad that could be because it has never happened. We’re truly in unchartered waters.    
 
The government can prevent this

I hope people realize that fossil fuels are dirty, nasty and dangerous to people and ecosystems.  

To be dependent on fossil fuels is like being in the dinosaur age. We have to more forward. We have got to harness the sun, the water, and the wind. We need to embrace clean energies. I do not trust energies that put people and ecosystems at risk. Alternative fuels are the only answer.  
 
I hope people learn to question and not become complacent about dirty energy operating in their backyards. Those rigs have been there all my life. When something is there that long you get lulled into a false sense of security. Every single rig has the potential to cause this kind of damage. I hope that people learn to speak out and not allow this to happen in their community. It can ruin everything.  

I’ve been teaching others about recycling, biodiversity, and conservation for 20 years, but that doesn’t touch what’s happened here. This goes beyond the lesson I was teaching. You can teach those concepts, but if you’ve got BP in your backyard it doesn’t matter how much you recycle or conserve.

Our government can stop this. I’d like to know the plan so that this never happens to another community like it did to mine. I’d like to hear the government’s plan to spare any other communities from having to deal with a disaster like this one.  

- Jo Billups

So what if the waiter spit in your soup? The amount of spit is tiny compared to the amount of soup in your bowl.

So what if there’s arsenic in the water? The amount of arsenic is tiny compared to the amount of water in the municipal supply.

So what? Well, I for one wouldn’t want to eat that soup or drink that water, despite assurances that the good stuff is in more abundance than the bad stuff. Would you?

Incredibly, this is basically the argument being advanced by BP CEO Tony Hayward, who recently told the UK Guardian of the BP Deepwater Disaster oil spill in an attempt to play down the impact of the oil spill on Gulf ecosystems: “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”

Some 5 million gallons of oil have spilled so far — and that’s based on conservative estimates of the rate at which oil is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. And BP has reportedly used an “estimated 400,000 gallons” of dispersant — itself a highly toxic and dangerous substance — to try and cover its tracks.

Several attempts by BP to stem the flow of the oil have failed, so Hayward is touting the use of dispersants as a major success by BP because it has kept the oil from washing ashore in “large amounts.” Of course, as we’ve been reporting, this is only a good thing for BP, because images of the oil washing up on beaches and coating wildlife such as sea birds who are currently nesting in the delicate ecosystems of the Gulf’s shoreline would compound the damage to the company’s already beleaguered public image.

In reality, the dispersant and the oil are both toxic and are both poisoning fish, which the seabirds need to eat. Funny thing about an ecosystem is that everything is interconnected, and you can’t do harm to one part without effecting the rest. But that, apparently, is no concern of Tony Hayward’s.

The truth is, Gulf Coast communities and ecosystems will be dealing with the effects of this oil spill for generations to come. The real extent of the damage won’t be known for some time, but it’s sure to be disastrous. Livelihoods are already being lost, dolphins and other marine mammals are already turning up dead on beaches — and it’s only just begun.

Try as he might, there is no way for Tony Hayward to minimize the impact of his company’s negligence in this case. And it’s only a matter of time before the next oil spill — which could be even more disastrous if it occurred in a place that is far more fragile and hard to reach, such as the Arctic. It’s time Congress took serious action to end our reliance on dirty fossil fuels and usher in a new era of clean, green renewable energy.

What’s sweeter than a candy bar?  The new pledge by food giant Nestle to cut forest destruction out of its products and out of its supply chain.  In just weeks, a global Greenpeace campaign has transformed Nestle from a company driving rainforest destruction through its use of palm oil, to one pioneering an ambitious new policy to ensure its products have a zero deforestation footprint.

With its new policy, Nestle commits to identify and exclude companies from its supply chain that own or manage “high risk plantations or farms linked to deforestation.”  This would apply to the notorious Sinar Mas group, a palm oil and paper conglomerate that Greenpeace has repeatedly caught destroying Paradise rainforests.  It also has implications for Cargill, a Nestle palm oil supplier which purchases from Sinar Mas.  In short, companies can either stop destroying rainforests, or they will stop having Nestle’s business.

While this victory came swiftly, there was a lot of work leading up to it.  For years, Greenpeace has worked to achieve major breakthroughs with some of the world’s largest users of palm oil including Unilever, Kraft and other giant consumer product companies.  Despite this, Nestle – the largest food and drink company in the world – was dragging its feet.  To motivate them, Greenpeace launched a global campaign on March 17th targeting the company and exposing its links to Paradise Forest destruction.

Within a few hours of the campaign launch and publishing of our Caught Red-Handed expose, Nestle agreed to cancel its direct business contracts with Sinar Mas.

But, that was a relatively small move for Nestle – most of the palm oil they purchase comes from third-party traders.  We had to keep the pressure on the company.  Thanks to supporters and activists like you around the world, we did just that.

The support online has been overwhelming.  The edgy “Have a Break” campaign video removal from YouTube sparked an online uproar and video reposting to Vimeo, driving 100,000 online views within the first 24 hours.  Within weeks, the video had been viewed more than 1.5 million times!

Facebook was another key online arena for the campaign, where a steady stream of pressure was applied to Nestle via comments you posted on its Facebook page.  The response was so overwhelming, it incapacitated Nestle’s page, spiraling into an online PR disaster for the company.  The Wall Street Journal, among other international media, was prompted to declare that “Nestle Takes a Beating on Social-Media Sites.”

The power of social media combined dramatically with our direct actions to deliver the message directly to Nestlé at events like its annual shareholder meeting on April 15th.  Outside the meeting venue, investors and executives were greeted by protesting orangutans as they arrived.  Inside, our activists hid in conference center's cavernous rafters, then dropped down on banners over executives heads telling Nestle to stop destroying rainforests.  You can read more about those dramatic actions in one of my previous blog entries.

Despite its new commitments, Nestle has plenty of work to do to implement its policy.  You can rest assured Greenpeace will be watching closely to make sure it does.

Greenpeace will also be making it clear that other large companies and retailers must take steps to clean up their palm oil and pulp and paper supply chains.  The Nestle policy does not mean the problem is fixed.  Rather, it is a model and starting point for other companies to build on.

Governments need to get involved as well to make sure actions by companies are not short-circuited, and to ensure long-term protections for the Paradise Forests.  President Obama is going to Indonesia in June and is expected to address forest issues while there.  Tell him to encourage Indonesia President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to protect peatlands and create a moratorium on forest destruction immediately.  Click here to take action!

Also, spread the good news about this huge victory to friends on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace!

For the forests,

-Rolf

After spending decades as a commercial fisherman in the North Pacific, I fully understand the economic hardships facing Gulf fishermen. I’ve faced seasons that were either delayed or closed for various reasons myself. The economic disruption and resulting stress for my family was miniscule compared to what Gulf fishermen are facing. But at the time it seemed like our world was crashing down around us.

May 5, 2010 - Fishermen wait to talk to a representative of BP to registe their boats and work with the cleanup effort in the Gulf of Mexico. It's the only work they can get now that most local fisheries are closed. © Tim Aubry/Greenpeace Find more images of the BP Deepwater Disaster, read the latest news, and take action to stop the next oil spill

As the old saying goes: “Timing is everything.” It goes without saying that there’s never a good time for an oil spill. However, for fishing fleets in the Gulf of Mexico, the timing of this spill couldn’t have been worse. During the winter, while not fishing and living off the previous season’s earnings, the family coffers drain to empty. The stress at home goes up as the bank account goes down.

Winter slowly fades to spring, and optimism about the upcoming season begins to build as captains and crews get ready to start doing what they do best – fish for their living. Knowing there’s just a matter of days from the first paycheck of the season, some bills sit on the counter unpaid: “Oh well, we’ll pay the late fees.” You have to be ready for the opening – get out the credit cards, make a deal with the fuel dock to pay later, borrow from friends, family, the bank – whoever – to buy the groceries, fuel, ice, and needed equipment. The boat is ready and the bank account empty but not to worry, fishing season is literally hours away! Watch the weather forecast. Recheck everything. It’s almost time… It will all work out, it always has…

And then BAM! Oil everywhere, poisoning the fish, poisoning the birds, washing up on shore, destroying the ecosystem you have built your living on your whole life.

The impact of this oil spill is not going be a short-term event, and then back to business as usual. There’s a real possibility that the very ecosystem that supports Gulf fisheries will be damaged for years to come.

For BP to offer a quick $5,000 one-time payment to the fishermen and their families who have quite literally lost their livelihood is outrageous. Fishing families need money to pay their bills immediately and support payments need to continue for as long as it takes the Gulf to recover.