Greenpeace

Months ago, forest destroyer Sinar Mas told industry peers that it would formally respond to issues raised by a Greenpeace report.  After mountains of bad press and losing business, many had hoped the palm oil, paper, and coal giant would use this moment to come clean, admit mistakes and move forward to improve its business.

Unfortunately, Sinar Mas is not showing any signs of doing that.

Sinar Mas was meant to publish an audit into its own activities by the end of June.  They baulked and postponed until late July.  Now, they are saying it will be August 10th.

In the meantime, Sinar Mas has hired PR firm Bell Pottinger to help present their greenwash.  Bell Pottinger recently did public relations work for Trafigura, the oil trading company who was recently convicted and fined for illegally transporting toxic waste to the Ivory Coast.  Classy clientele!

Anticipating that Sinar Mas will try to greenwash the results of their flawed audit, Greenpeace just released (more!) fresh evidence that notorious forest destroying practices continue unabated and in direct violation of the company’s own environmental commitments on protecting forests and peatlands.  The report, Empires of Destruction, contains evidence that Sinar Mas is clearing rainforest and peatland areas on the island of Borneo.  Further photographic evidence shows Sinar Mas recently cleared rainforest orangutan habitat.  While Sinar Mas talks about protecting rainforests and peatlands, its actions speak louder, and tell a different story.

But, it is not just what Sinar Mas has done in the past that should cause alarm – it is what it plans to do in the future.  In addition the report details how Sinar Mas plans to expand its empire of destruction even further.  Last week, the Sinar Mas palm oil division, Golden Agri Resources, confirmed plans to expand into an additional 2.5 million acres

With wildlife like the orangutan and Sumatran tiger being pushed towards extinction, the Paradise Forests cannot afford to continue to be the victim of Sinar Mas’s ever expanding empire.

The good news is that Nestle, Kraft, Unilever, HSBC, and other prominent companies are distancing themselves from Sinar Mas.  Until Sinar Mas is no longer involved in destroying rainforests and peatlands, other companies who still purchase from them – like fast food companies Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts and Pizza Hut – should take similar measures.  Take a moment now to tell those companies to stop serving up forest destruction!

For the forest,

-Rolf

We released a report back in March that exposed Charles and David Koch, the billionaire oilmen who control Koch Industries, as a chief source of funding for the climate denial machine. Well, turns out doing everything possible to delay the clean energy revolution actually runs in the family. Today we’ve released a report on Bill Koch, David’s twin brother and the principal funder of opposition to Cape Wind, the project to build the nation’s largest wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts.

A Greenpeace boat in front of the Offshore Windpark Egmond aan Zee off the Dutch coast. America is falling behind in the race to develop renewable energy technologies and utilize renewable resources. Cape Wind would be the first major offshore wind facility in the US.

Bill Koch made his fortune through his privately-held, carbon-intensive company, Oxbow (or, I should probably say, he founded Oxbow with the fortune he received from suing his brothers in 1983 after they ousted him from the family business). Oxbow Corporation, with $3.7 billion in yearly sales and over 1200 employees, sells 10 million metric tons of petroleum coke and 8 million metric tons of steam coal annually.

After making a killing peddling dirty energy, Bill Koch turns around and uses his immense personal wealth to fund the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the primary group that finds every possible way to undermine and delay Cape Wind. Even worse, he pays lobbyists through his Oxbow corporation to try and quietly kill the wind farm project altogether.

We compiled the full story behind Bill Koch into a brief dossier which you can read below or righ-click this link and choose "Save Link As" to download the PDF: Bill Koch: The Dirty Money Behind Cape Wind Opposition.

Bill Koch: The Dirty Money Behind Cape Wind Opposition

There’s no way to clean up an oil spill. We’ve seen this time and again — in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, for instance, where oil from the Exxon Valdez spill is still having an impact on local ecosystems. Corporations like Exxon or BP that find themselves responsible for an oil spill — or, as was the case for Exxon and now is the case for BP, an oil disaster — are really left with only one option to handle the problem: public relations, damage control and fierce lobbying.

It’s clear BP knows this all too well, and is determined to spare no expense on the cleanup… of its image. We put together this "ScamWow" video to highlight this sad state of affairs:


We decided to spoof the original late night infomercials for the ShamWow miracle clean-up towel, which is touted as a quick fix for any cleaning problem (it's made in Germany and "You know the Germans always make good stuff"), because BP is attempting to use PR damage control as a miracle cure for its sullied image. Except, unfortunately, PR has no miraculous cleaning powers. The company's image may be less soiled as a result of the millions BP is spending on PR, but the Gulf of Mexico will be reeling from the impacts of the company's negligence for decades.

Consider the estimated $50 million BP has spent on an all-out media blitz, complete with a TV ad featuring an earnest Tony “I’d like my life back” Hayward looking into the camera and assuring us “We will make this right.” What he means is, "We will do anything to make you think we will make this right" — anything short of, you know, actually reporting the true size of the spill, allowing journalists unfettered access to spill sites and oiled beaches to provide independent coverage of cleanup operations, stopping the damn leak in a timely manner, or god-forbid taking worker and environmental safety concerns seriously in the first place so that this spill never even happened.

“The Gulf spill is a tragedy that never should have happened,” Tony “The size of the spill is small in relation to the size of the ocean” Hayward tells us in his TV ad. We can agree on that, at least, Tony!

BP has engaged multiple PR and lobby firms to help wage its PR assault, which spans all conceivable media. According to our calculations, BP spent almost $6 million through the end of June on ads in newspapers like the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today, while also purchasing Google and Yahoo ads that will display whenever people search for “oil spill” — surely an extremely pricey keyword at the moment that is generating a lot of clicks.

Considering the spill cleanup costs (estimated at $16 million a day), why would BP do this? Because public relations and lobbying is one way BP can turn public opinion in their favor and soften the blow from lawsuits, regulators, and Congress.  If the public could somehow be made to feel sympathetic toward BP, or to feel that BP is really going “to make this right,” the ultimate financial pain to BP might be lessened. So from where BP’s sitting — a place where the bottom line is the ultimate concern, not Gulf Coast residents’ livelihoods, not Gulf Coast ecosystems — the decision to give their image the vigorous scrubbing they can’t give the Gulf Coast ecosystems befouled by their oil is a no-brainer.

BP made $66 million a day in profits in the first quarter of 2010. If they want to keep raking it in hand over fist like that, they gotta do some damage control. It’s just that simple.

Oil spills are an inevitability of the supremely dirty oil drilling business, especially as companies are forced to dig deeper and take more outrageous risks to reach what’s left of the world’s oil reserves. Heard about BP’s plans to drill 2 miles deep and as much as eight miles horizontally from a gravel island the company built in the middle of the Beaufort Sea up in the Arctic? No, that’s not just a sick joke.

The Exxon Valdez spill is not our only example of how impossible it is to clean up spilled oil: Ask the villagers down in Ecuador who are still battling with Chevron to try and get their traditional lands cleaned up, or the people over in Nigeria who suffer from companies like Shell spilling the equivalent of a Valdez-sized spill every year. Oil is wreaking havoc on communities across the globe, and the companies responsible always seem to treat these disasters as little more than the cost of doing business. The Ecuadorian Amazon, the Niger Delta, the Gulf of Mexico — these are collateral damage in Big Oil’s relentless pursuit for reckless profits.

The real way forward is of course to stop drilling and invest in clean energy, but oil companies cannot be depended on to drive society toward clean energy. They are OIL companies after all.

The only way to stop oil spills once and for all is to leave it in the ground where it belongs. President Obama and Congress need to ensure we kickstart the clean energy revolution and stop drilling for oil. Check out our blueprint for how America can achieve 96% renewable energy by 2050 and create over a million jobs by 2030: Energy [R]evolution: A Sustainable USA Energy Outlook. Help promote our vision for the sustainable future! Then take action to tell Congress No New Drilling, Period.

If you're a fan of forests, you've probably heard a lot recently about the Greenpeace Paradise Forest campaign.  In particular, you may have heard about the giant conglomerate Sinar Mas which dominates the palm oil industry in Indonesia.  Greenpeace has documented Sinar Mas repeatedly breaking industry guidelines, Indonesian law and its own public statements, razing rainforests to the ground in its race to produce palm oil.  The growing controversy around their role in destroying rainforests crucial to endangered wildlife like orangutans and Sumatran tigers has led companies like Nestle, Kraft and Unilever to start cutting Sinar Mas palm oil out of their supply chains.

Sinar Mas is a huge conglomerate, and palm oil is only one of its businesses...and only one of the ways it destroys rainforests.  Asia Pulp & Paper – it’s giant paper branch – is one of the largest paper companies in the world, and one of the worst threats to rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands in Indonesia.

A new Greenpeace report released today exposes the destructive practices of APP and shines a light on the companies that are still doing business Sinar Mas.  The report also counters recent APP greenwash, including its claim that its suppliers “only develop least valuable degraded forests and denuded [barren] wasteland.”  Pulping the Planet shows that the company is still sourcing from critical orangutan and Sumatran tiger habitat such as the Bukit Tigapulu Forest Landscape and Kerumutan Peat Forest.  The report details how that rainforest and peatland destruction is also causing huge amounts of climate pollution. 

You can read the report here (you’ll need Adobe Reader and some patience to download the report since it’s a pretty big file).

 

The report has already earned a lot of international attention and been reported on in with media outlets such as the New York Times, CNN and Time Magazine.

 

The report also draws attention to companies like Pizza Hut, Burger King and Dunkin’ Donuts that Sinar Mas listed as key global customers in 2009.  With leading food companies like Nestle, Kraft and Unilever taking action to sever business ties with rainforest-destroying companies, you have to wonder what fast-food companies are waiting for...are they waiting for activist orangutans to show up at their door?  That could be arranged!

 

Give fast food companies a wake up call.  Click here to tell them to stop serving up rainforest destruction!

 

For the forests,

 -Rolf

"The basis of a democratic state is liberty." — Aristotle

On Sunday we celebrate the Fourth of July and America's independence from tyranny and injustice. But we go into this weekend with a tangible reminder of our continued dependence on fossil fuels.

Hurricane Season is here. Oil continues its advance unabated into the Gulf. We don’t know how much oil is flowing. BP is incapable of solving the problem. Congress is soon to recess. Neither the Federal nor State governments have the ability to remediate the damage.

Yet how many of us will jump in the car this weekend? Isn’t this complicity in Big Oil’s stranglehold on our lives? Why are we buying the "dirty lie" that oil is the crux of our transportation energy mix?

America can generate 96% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050, and create over one million renewable energy sector jobs by 2030. Read more and download the Energy [R]evolution report (PDF)

BP has spent millions on advertising in USA Today, The New York Times and the Washington Post. Don’t worry, we’ll clean it up, they say. Stay calm everyone. They’re on top of it. Nothing to see here.

In fact, BP has obscured the truth at every turn. Now, they are in the process of christening their horribly misnamed “Liberty” drilling operation (Happy Fourth of July, right?) in Alaska.  They will drill two miles beneath a small, man-made island, and then drill sideways for six to eight miles so that they can reach an offshore reservoir.

But what about the moratorium announced by President Obama? Well, since they’ve built a 31-acre artificial gravel island, they're able to register it as an onshore rig, effectively green-lighting their operation.

At what point does outrage spark our elected officials to put aside partisan bickering and get the job done? This is about ecocide in the Gulf of Mexico. This is about Big Oil gaming the system so that they can profit off of our public lands.

Punching a hole in the ground and extracting super-heated, highly pressurized oil and natural gas is dangerous and messy. There is one way to prevent this from happening again. We must have a permanent ban on all drilling.  There must be unlimited liability for polluters. We must end all direct and indirect fossil fuel subsidies and transition public investments to clean, renewable energy sources and energy efficiency technologies.

Drilling moratoriums are not permanent and can be easily circumvented. Liability escrow accounts are not policy. As long as it is exceedingly lucrative to drill for oil these companies will continue their operations. Indeed, one month before the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster began, a BP presentation from March 2010 identified expanding deepwater drilling as the company’s “key sources of growth” beyond 2015.

Too much time has passed since the oil has started flowing into the Gulf. How much suffering need be inflicted upon the people of the Gulf for the rest of America to act?

I say enough is enough. We need to channel the spirit of the Fourth and declare independence from Big Oil. An Energy [R]evolution is necessary.

This Fourth of July, declare your independence from Big Oil’s big deceptions.

Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace US, appeared recently on The Breakdown, a weekly podcast on TheNation.com. Kert was the architect of ExxonSecrets.org  and is currently running our PolluterWatch.org campaign.

The Breakdown is a newly launched weekly podcast series by Christopher Haynes of TheNation.com. Haynes describes the podcast: “Basically, it's a new model of how readers and citizens can get their tough questions answered by experts and journalists”.

Last week, we saw a frenzy of activity around the oil spill — BP CEO Tony Hayward was grilled by Congress and President Obama addressed the nation for the first time ever from the Oval Office. Still, the situation remains the same in the Gulf — the world continues to watch the oil gush into the Gulf killing and harming precious marine animals and the ecosystems they rely on.

The Breakdown is betting that one question might have crossed a lot of people’s minds: “Is BP unique in its ability to create catastrophe or is the entire practice of offshore oil drilling inherently and equally dangerous regardless of which company is running the rig?”

Kert helps The Breakdown answer that question here, or listen below:

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HSBC, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, has attempted to position itself as an environmentally responsible bank.  They have a policy not to invest in companies that destroy rainforests.  They offer customers a mutual fund that invests in companies offering climate solutions.  But, HSBC has a big problem.  Their Global Climate Change Fund invests in Sinar Mas, one of the worst rainforests destroying, climate polluting company on the planet!


Believe it or not, Sinar Mas was included in the climate fund with flawed rationale that their palm oil could be turned into a climate-friendly biodiesel.  But, as Greenpeace has repeatedly pointed out, Sinar Mas destroys Paradise rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands to make room for its palm oil plantations, often breaking industry standards and Indonesia law in the process.

In the United Kingdom, Greenpeace exposed this dramatic contradiction to the London-based bank and in the press, but HSBC leadership in London passed the buck.  They said their forest policy did not apply to funds they managed, only their direct investments.  And they said there wasn’t sufficient data to indicate whether Sinar Mas palm oil biodiesel was bad for the climate.  Huh?

In the US, we decided to help motivate the bank with creative activism.  In San Francisco on Tuesday, orangutans showed up on the busy sidewalks in the heart of the financial district.  They, along with their human friends, distributed hundreds of flyers to passersby, and inspired people to make calls to HSBC headquarters.  The orangutans and their friends ended their visit to HSBC with a rousing song entitled “Oh, HSBC” (sung to the tune of “Oh Christmas Tree”).

Oh, HSBC, oh HSBC
    You’re banking with hypocrisy
Green “Climate Fund” now that’s a gas
You’re investing in dirty Sinar Mas
Oh, HSBC, oh HSBC
    You’re banking with hypocrisy

Oh, HSBC, oh HSBC
    You’re banking with hypocrisy
Orangutans running out of luck
They need your help, but you pass the buck
Oh, HSBC, oh HSBC
    You’re banking with hypocrisy

Oh, HSBC, oh HSBC
    You’re banking with hypocrisy
You have a forest policy
But you weasel out with technicalities
Oh, HSBC, oh HSBC
    You’re banking with hypocrisy

Catchy isn’t it?

On Thursday, orangutans visited an HSBC bank in Silicone Valley on the sunny streets of Palo Alto.  Within moments of a banner unfurling and an orangutan “die-in” (orangutans sprawled out, lying on the sidewalk) bank management called the police.  But, since our orangutans were well-behaved and well versed in their rights to free speech and assembly, they were allowed to stay on site, spreading the word and attracting supportive honks from passing motorists…much to the dismay of HSBC management.

Where will the activist apes show up next?  HSBC will have to wait and see!  In the meantime, send your message to HSBC by clicking here.

-Rolf

 

 

Greenpeace’s Energy [R]evolution is an in-depth analysis of how we can move successfully to clean, renewable energy by 2050 while leaving dirty, dangerous fossil fuels behind. We teamed up with scientists, engineers, universities and institutes from around the world to draft this blueprint for how we get from where we are now to a green and peaceful future — in other words, where we need to be.

We are now happy to announce that we have rolled out an Energy [R]evolution iPhone app so you can access our report on the go! The future now fits right in your pocket.

Here are some of the app's key features:

• Provides a shorter, lighter and more concise version of the report.
• Find out all that you could ever want to know about the report in our FAQ section.
• Provide a boost to the [R]evolution by using the quick signup tool and taking actions online. (*Note: By signing up through the app, you'll get Greenpeace International's monthly newsletter and action alerts. Sign up for Greenpeace USA's monthly newsletter and action alerts here.)
• The app also provides an opportunity to make contributions to support Greenpeace's work to ensure the Energy [R]evolution becomes a reality.

You can read more about the app here or download the app now and be a part of the Energy [R]evolution!

(Please note, however, that the app is for the global scenario specifically. You can find out more about our sustainable energy scenario for the USA here.)

If we’ve learned anything from the BP Deepwater Disaster, it’s that we can’t afford not to transition to clean renewable energy and get off of dirty fossil fuels pronto.

The American public knows that: 71% of Americans now support regulating greenhouse gas emissions according to a new poll. And some 72% oppose new offshore drilling according to another. So the fact that the Senate defeated Alaskan Sen. Lisa Murkowski's pro-coal, pro-oil, anti-regulation, anti-envronment bill by such a narrow margin is a bit of a shock.

Let me just say straight out that it's certainly good news that the Senate voted the right way. But it should have been a blowout, not 53 to 47. The Senate is, obviously, well behind the public in terms of being in touch with reality about America’s energy future.

With images like those in this video making headlines on a daily basis, it's beyond me how 47 Senators could still vote on behalf of Big Oil to preserve the status quo:


You can read our full response to the vote on Senator Murkowski’s Dirty Air Act for more. And if you still think that oil spills are just somehow a regrettable side effect of what is otherwise a completely necessary reliance on oil as an energy source, you haven't checked out our Energy [R]evolution report yet, which shows how we can leave fossil fuels behind while transitioning to a sustainable energy economy.

At the end of the day, of course, it’s not what’s on the scoreboard that matters but whether you have another loss or win in the standings. We chalked up another win for the environment yesterday, but you can bet the fossil fuel industry’s other champions are already lining up to finish the task of gutting the Clean Air Act on behalf of big polluters that Murkowski started.

The next attack against the Clean Air Act in the Senate will likely be launched by Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, a coal country Democrat who has the support of other Democratic Senators that actually voted against Murkowski’s Dirty Air Act. So stay tuned, given the deep pockets of our fossil fuels opponents and their allies in Congress, it’s going to take plenty of teamwork to chalk up the next victory for the environment.

The best way to stop oil spills from happening is pretty simple, actually: Leave the oil in the ground where it belongs.

If you think that's not possible, or that it would mean shivering in the dark, or that millions of people would have to go without energy and jobs, you'd probably be forgiven for thinking that. That's the line that Big Oil and King Coal have been feeding us. But it's wrong on all counts.

Read more and download the report (PDF)

We teamed up with more than 30 scientists and engineers from universities, institutes, and the renewable energy industry to create our new report, Energy [R]evolution: A Sustainable USA Energy Outlook. The report lays down a blueprint for how we ensure our emissions peak by 2015, as the Nobel prize-winning IPCC says they must if we’re to avoid runaway global warming, while phasing out nuclear and fossil fuel energy. It shows how we can provide about 96% of our electricity from renewable sources by 2050, and in the process create 1.1 million jobs in the renewables sector alone by 2030.

Why a [r]evolution? Moving from the dirty fossil fuels of the past and onto the clean, green renewable energy sources of the future requires an evolution AND a revolution. (And yes, electronics geeks, that’s the symbol for [r]esistance there as well.)

We need a [r]evolution because business as usual is not going to stop the tens of thousands of barrels of crude oil spilling into our waters, scores of workers losing their lives to accidents in coal mines around the world, or the countless other disasters we are all facing due to our reliance on dirty energy.

Despite all the evidence that we’re paying far too high a price for our dependence on fossil fuels, Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski is trying to roll back the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions — a critical tool in making the Energy [R]evolution a reality.

Your Senators can help jumpstart the energy revolution by defeating Murkowski's Dirty Air Act and having the courage to end our dependence on coal and oil. Write to them now.