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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click on some relevant articles below from the last week:

Obama calls for climate pact with 'immediate' effect

Obama must be more engaged on climate change: Greenpeace

U.S. weighs backing interim international climate agreement

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check out these pics from the delivery event today:



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

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



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

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



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

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

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

Willie, from Greenpeace UK, blogs from Brazil, where he is attending the ICCAT meeting.

So, here in Brazil, the game is on. At the end of yesterday’s session the parties around the table at the ICCAT meeting were asked what their priorities were for conserving bluefin tuna. One by one they made positive murmurings about wanting to 'follow the scientific recommendations', and enforce compliance with them. They all pretty much said they want to see illegal fishing tackled. No rocket science there, and you would be forgiven for wondering why they have not done those things already!

More importantly there were also some hints as to how low some countries would go in terms of a quota, with several actually suggesting the possibility of closing the fishery. To you and me that may be a no-brainer. To many of them, it is a seismic shift.

Now, we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves here. There is a lot of horse-trading to be done behind closed stable doors. And it's worth noting that the talk about closing the fishery is just for one year – which could well be a very convenient way of avoiding bluefin being subject to an international trade ban under CITES.

Greenpeace, and other conservation organizations here, won’t settle for that – and we are reminding the participants at ICCAT that the only credible thing they can do is close this fishery.

And it seems they desperately want to regain some credibility here. You can understand that, after all ICCAT was branded an 'international disgrace'  by an independent review. The spotlight is on them because of what they have allowed to happen to bluefin, and the bureaucrats who attend these meetings really don’t like that. Delegate after delegate has talked about the need for ICCAT to claw back credibility, conveniently ignoring that this is a situation their own bad judgement in the past has gotten them into.

From an observer’s point of view here there is much to be cynical about. This is a dysfunctional meeting in a tropical paradise, at a resort whose very construction has caused disruption and problems for the local coastline in Brazil, with gala dinners, cocktail receptions, and a self-congratulating bunch of faceless bureaucrats mismanaging species, fisheries, and livelihoods.

Yesterday was an eye opener, with some impassioned and stirring interventions (particularly from some of the African delegations) requesting stronger action to protect stocks of fish in their waters. At several points I wanted to stand up, cheer and applaud. But those heartfelt pleas were met by some cynical process point-scoring by delegations on the other side of the table, immediately filling me with despair.

There is still a long way to go here.

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

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

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

 

Without government subsidies, the whaling program would be doomed.

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

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

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

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

 

--Michelle

 

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


© Greenpeace/John Novis

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


© Greenpeace/John Novis

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

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

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

Check out lots more great photos in this slideshow:

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

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

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

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

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

Willie, from Greenpeace UK, blogs from Brazil, where he is attending the ICCAT meeting.

As I write this, I'm sitting in the plenary room of the ICCAT meeting, whilst Charles Clover's film 'The End of The Line' is being screened. This in itself is a great coup.

In a memorable scene from the film, whilst attending a previous ICCAT meeting, Clover himself chastized the bureaucrats in that meeting for setting irresponsibly high quotas that ignored scientific advice. In his words they were '…negotiating with biology. And you just can't do that, and expect to see the biology survive'.

It's a stunningly simple thing. Fishing is harvesting wild animals, and that can only happen if there are healthy populations of those animals, which in turn means healthy ecosystems to support them. And you simply can't take out more fish than is being replenished. Fish, like any other animals, are only a renewable resource up to a point!

 

 

Organisations like ICCAT, which are Fisheries Management Organizations, theoretically exist to make sure that the countries involved are managing the fisheries, OUR fisheries, effectively. But there's a catch. To you and me this would mean setting sensible quotas and not trashing fish stocks. But many of the people involved in ICCAT and other such organizations, seem to think their job is to squeeze every last fish out of the oceans, and keep their fishing industries happy. So when it comes down to setting quotas, it doesn't quite make sense.

ICCAT gets its own scientists to give it information on the stocks for which it is responsible (tuna, swordfish, sailfish and sharks). It then uses those to decide on quotas, which is a game of political haggling until an agreement is reached. Note that I said it 'uses' those. It isn't bound by them, and sometimes it just ignores them altogether. In fact they routinely set quotas vastly higher than the upper limits of what the scientists suggest would be safe especially on lucrative species like bluefin.

This is utter madness.

This year with huge amounts of public pressure, bad press, and celebrity outrage at the state of bluefin, ICCAT members are all talking very sincerely about setting catch levels that 'follow the science'. Surely they should be bound by the scientific recommendations – otherwise, what's the point of having them? Surely it should not take campaigns and catastrophic stock collapses to make ICCAT see that?

The starting point for ICCAT, and other fisheries management organizations should be the science, and the quotas shouldn't exceed that. But that in itself isn't even enough, as the New York Times has ably pointed out this week.  We are doing lots of things to our oceans, trashing other species as bycatch and altering ecosystems in ways we can't imagine. So we should be much more precautionary than the science suggests, especially when we factor in illegal fishing activity (which, as we know, is rampant for the profitable bluefin).

ICCAT has its work cut out. It has been dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that it has mismanaged bluefin tuna. And that's just the tip of the fishy iceberg. Most of the species under ICCAT's control are large predatory species, and globally they have declined by 90% over the last few decades. 

No wonder ICCAT is uncomfortable that the world is watching them this week.  But it remains to be seen if they will be shamed into usefulness. I'll keep you posted.