mikeg

This Reuters article, published yesterday, does a great job of laying out the progress we’ve made so far in stopping deforestation in the Amazon thanks to our report, “Slaughtering the Amazon.”

SAO PAULO/RIO DE JANEIRO, June 29 (Reuters) - In a victory for conservationists, Brazil's huge cattle industry is bending to demands to curb destruction of the Amazon forest after heavy criticism of its leading role in deforestation.

Reforms by Brazil's big slaughterhouses could move the industry toward increased productivity and away from the practice of burning trees to clear land in the world's largest rainforest, industry officials and conservationists say.

…

In the past month, since the release of a 40-page Greenpeace report detailing links between Brazil's meatpackers and deforestation, the World Bank has withdrawn a $90 million loan to one firm. And supermarket chains said they would stop buying beef from 11 producers in the Amazon state of Para.

Big beef firms announced steps to ensure their cattle come from legal ranches. Beef exporters pledged not to accept meat from illegally deforested areas and to set up an electronic tracing system to guarantee the animals' origin.

"There have been very good decisions," said Andre Muggiati of Greenpeace, whose report used satellite data to show that beef for Brazil's domestic market and exports often comes from farms with recent deforestation.

"Now it is about implementation of deals. You have to monitor these commitments. If not, you lose it."

Like my colleague Andre says, making a commitment and following through on that commitment are two different things. We’ll be monitoring the situation in the Amazon closely to ensure that those companies who have committed to making changes actually follow through.

We’re still waiting to hear back from several of the shoe companies named in the report as to what they plan to do to make sure that the leather in their shoes is not coming from Amazon destruction. If you haven’t taken action yet, write to Nike, Adidas, Timberland, Geox, and Clarks right now and tell them to support solutions to deforestation and global warming. And if you’ve read any of the PR spin these companies have put out in the wake of our report release, you can read our responses here.

President Obama vowed to “restore science to its rightful place” in his inagural address. And then earlier today he said, "Now is the time for us to lead…. We cannot be afraid of the future. And we must not be prisoners of the past."

The Waxman-Markey climate legislation, however, will not do what the science says is necessary to avert the worst effects of climate change. In fact, House Democrats have worked extensively with the coal industry to edit the bill, which has translated into weakened emissions targets and massive offsets, in addition to several other critical shortcomings. Instead of leaving coal in the past – as the dirtiest of fossil fuels, it certainly has no place in a sustainable future – the coal industry now stands to reap significant rewards from the American Climate and Energy Security Act as it’s currently written.

That is why Greenpeace opposes the bill in its current form. Read our statement here.

The President must deliver on his campaign pledge to set climate policy based on science, not politics. Without President Obama’s leadership, corporate polluters will continue to highjack this process and ensure that we continue business as usual rather than implement policies to combat climate change.

Here are some of the key shortcomings of the bill:

• The Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that to avoid the worst climate impacts, the United States and other industrialized countries must cut their emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020. The short-term target in this bill is only a 4% reduction by 2020.
• The already weak targets set by the bill are further undermined by 2 billion tons per year of allowable offsets. That number is so large that the amount of available offsets will exceed the actual pollution reductions required under the cap until at least 2026—meaning it will be more than a decade before polluters would have to make real cuts in their emissions.
• Coal -fired power plants are the single largest source of global warming pollution in the US. In order to tackle climate change, we need to begin phasing out coal immediately. Far from phasing-out coal plants, however, Waxman-Markey will spur the growth of a new generation of coal-fired plants, locking in this dirty energy source for decades to come and sinking tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into the myth of carbon capture and sequestration – an untested, and unproven technology that is decades away from full-scale deployment even by the most optimistic estimates.
• Worst of all, the Waxman-Markey bill will actually remove the President’s existing authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act—authority recently reaffirmed by the Supreme Court. At a time when we need should be pursuing every available means to stop global warming, Congress should not be throwing one of the most powerful tools at the President’s disposal.

We are calling on President Obama to move beyond rhetoric and deliver on his commitments to “restore science to its rightful place” and to lead the world in addressing climate change.

As the world’s largest emitters gathered in Mexico for the US-led Major Economies Forum, several of my colleagues staged a banner hang to call on the United States to take the lead on climate action. A banner reading "Save the Climate, Act Now!" was unfurled in Cuernavaca City, where the meeting is being held. Leadership is urgently needed to achieve a climate-saving treaty at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December and, sadly, that leadership has so far not been provided by the Obama Administration.

We're calling on the Obama Administration to make serious commitments to deep mid-term cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, as well as to provide long-promised funds for developing countries to adapt to climate change, bypass the dirty energy sources of the past where possible, and protect the world's forests. The 16 other major emitters — Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and the United Kingdom — must see that the US is serious so they will take the necessary action, too.

A very special edition of the International Herald Tribune has hit the streets today. It's dated "Saturday, December 19, 2009" — the day after the UN climate talks end in Copenhagen — and it reports the news we're hoping to see that day. Check it out:

(Click the image to view the online version of the paper; click here to download a low-res PDF.)

Personally, I'm especially fond of José Chingu's piece on the Amazon.

In response to the U.S. Global Change Research Program report released by the White House today, Greenpeace USA Climate Campaign Director Damon Moglen issued this statement:

The White House report on climate change is a stark confirmation of what scientists have been saying for years: unless we dramatically curb our emissions, the world will face unprecedented climate disruptions that will lead to drought, flooding, rising seas, food insecurity and mass displacement. But it begs the question: are the President and Congress taking the action necessary to avert this crisis?

As the report makes clear: ‘Future climate change and its impacts depend on choices [we] make today.’ With international climate negotiations veering off course and an inadequate global warming and energy bill moving through the House, the time has come for President Obama to move from words to deeds and commit to doing what is necessary to avoid runaway climate change.

To minimize the risk of truly catastrophic climate change, scientists say we must take action to keep global temperature rise as far below 2 degrees Celsius as possible. Today’s report confirms that to stay within this threshold, we must take aggressive action now and that ‘earlier cuts in emissions would have a greater effect in reducing climate change than comparable reductions later.’ It is troubling that, even as this report was being finalized, senior Administration officials refused even to commit to a 2 degree limit on warming and argued that the world should emphasize long-term action over the near-term targets most important to head off climate change.

The Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that to avoid the worst climate impacts, the United States and other industrialized countries must cut their emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020. Yet the targets being developed by Congress, and supported by the President, fall far short of this goal. If we are to avert climate catastrophe, the President must deliver on his campaign pledge to set climate policy based on science, not politics.

To do so, President Obama must commit the United States to keeping global warming as far below 2 degrees as possible, and lead America and the world in meeting that target. We call on the President to use every tool at his disposal, both within and outside Congress, to create U.S. climate policy with scientific integrity, and to take that policy to Copenhagen in December as evidence that the U.S. will do what it takes to solve the climate crisis.”

Specifically, the President must commit the United States to:

• Keeping global temperature increases as far below 2 degrees as possible;
• Achieving real emission reductions of at least 25% below 1990 levels by 2020;
• Eliminating offsets that undermine real emission reductions; and
• Providing the substantial international funding necessary to stop emissions from deforestation and help developing countries adapt to unavoidable climate impacts and leapfrog the dirty energy sources that would further exacerbate the problem.

Today’s report is a clarion call that the President and Congress must do much more, and more quickly, to respond to the climate crisis. We urge them to heed that call.