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August 28, 2008If through some quirk of evolution things had turned out differently and man lived at the north pole there wouldn't be much debate about global warming, just what to do about it.
Some leading scientists now fear the arctic has reached a tipping point, bad not just in itself, but one with knock on consequences for the pace of global warming.
MaltaToday has been served with seven libel suits for daring to publish the facts about one of the great fisheries scandals in the Mediterranean: tuna laundering.
Last year, Malta exported 12 million kilograms of tuna to Japan -- the world's most lucrative market for prized tuna belly meat. There's just one wee little accounting problem, in that MaltaToday reports that's about 6 million kilograms more than the country's licensed tuna ranchers could actually produce.
Greenpeace Australia-Pacific has launched our Forests for Climate tour with a colourful welcome in Papua New Guinea. Our ship, Esperanza, will tour the region protecting forests and highlighting the effect of deforestation on global warming.
To the sounds of beating drums and singing, the Esperanza docked in the tropical heat of Port Morseby. The ship’s crew was welcomed by traditional Huli, Kairuku, and Oro dancers along with Asaro mud men from coastal and highland regions. Dancers' costumes were made from the fibres of tapa and pandanus trees, leaves, bird of paradise feathers and, naturally, mud.
The ship's crew was formally welcomed by the Governor of the capital district, Powes Pakop, who praised Greenpeace, saying the Esperanza brings hope to Papua New Guinea. He noted that the impacts of climate change can already be witnessed, adding, “Now is the time to act. We don’t have to wait for the Kyoto protocol to take action.”
Here's a translation of a letter that Jun, Executive Director of Greenpeace Japan, sent along to the new Minister of Fisheries in Japan, requesting that he take up an investigation into the whale meat embezzlement scandal exposed by our activists. If you're new to the story of how investigators Junichi and Toru ended up under arrest instead of the criminals who were ripping off the Japanese taxpayers and the fat-cat bureaucrats who probably knew it was happening, welcome to the Looking Glass world of the whale meat scandal in Japan.
I'm still hoping this one spins out like the scandal over the sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior by French agents, back in 1985. I was in France when the "Tricot Report" came out, your basic political whitewash which couldn't find any evidence of French government involvement in the sinking whatsoever. As the evidence mounted and the police and press looked into it further, however, it became pretty clear that -- shock, horror -- a lot of people had lied to Mssr Tricot. One journalist reviewing the evidence declared that the fact that the French were behind the sinking probably could only have been clearer if the Clousseau-like agents had left a baguette, a beret, and a bottle of Beaujolais behind. In the end, the truth came out, the French agents who sent the ship to the bottom with two limpett mines did so on orders from the "highest level" to stop Greenpeace from interfering with the French nuclear weapons testing programme in Moruroa, and the Defense Minister resigned in disgrace.
So, who is going to take up the scandal of embezzlement and the fleecing of the Japanese Taxpayer and figure out how high the corruption goes? No harm in asking the new boss.
Disclosure of evidence regarding “souvenir” whale meat and request for a public explanation from the Nisshin Maru after its return to port following its scientific whaling mission in the North-West Pacific.
Congratulations on taking up office. I believe you are aware that the “scientific whaling” taking place under the control of the Fisheries Agency is being seriously questioned by Greenpeace. In particular, on the 5th of May this year, with the help of a crew member from the “scientific whaling” fleet, Greenpeace revealed to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office a wide-spread case of embezzlement involving whale meat. As a result, the former Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister, Mr. Wakabayashi, launched a rigorous internal investigation regarding the handling of whale meat.Following this however, the only matter that has been put into question is the method by which Greenpeace activists came to possess the 23.5 kg box of salted Unesu which was presented to the Tokyo Public Prosecutor’s office as undeniable evidence, and the Prosecutor’s office, on the other hand, has dropped the embezzlement case as a matter of “no suspicion”.
Biodiversity is in the air! It's Heritage Week in my country, and there's a healthy number of emails and stories going around of nature conservation and appreciation. There's a great "what can we do ourselves, right now, to help" attitude too (could it be the effect of summer holidays?) -- it's so uplifting.
Like last week's carrotmob, A group of birdwatcher-bloggers have started a small environmental project which could really take off some day. For now it's simply an experiment to answer the question: Can a birdwatchers' blog (10000birds.com) gather enough donations to support a conservation project in Kenya?
The photo above is from that website -- a Longclaw in grasslands in Kenya. Take a look at this blog post to learn more about it, and how you can chin in to help.
(By the way -- over 400,000 people have watched our ForestLove video in just under a month. I'm telling ya, biodiversity is hot!)
Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.
Full update on the Carrotmob site.
The little 'rain on the parade' voice inside my head said, "Yeah, but that's a bunch of work to change one store out of 20."
Then I thought... What if instead of rewarding the one store that actually does something, you make it more of a competition. Reward them after they take action, and the one that does the most - gets the most.
Lot's of business will act because they won't know exactly how much their competitors are doing.
Maybe this is even already your plan?
Here's an update from Richard Page, one of our oceans campaigners, on what's going on in the North Sea.
This week work to protect the Sylt Outer Reef resumed so that now over 100 stones have been strategically placed in order to deter what is nominally a protected area from bottom trawling and sand and gravel extraction.
The method is one which has been effectively used to protect important seagrass habitats in the Mediterranean from being trawled. Our goal is to establish a fully-protected marine reserve that will deliver real conservation and fisheries benefits and do what the German Government has failed to do - despite its international commitments to stop biodiversity loss and create a network of marine protected areas including marine reserves.
Been inside a 1.3 megawatt wind turbine yet? Me neither. But Greenpeace volunteer at large Pepijn Koster has, and he made this short video to share it with everyone on YouTube.
(There's a funny video after the jump...)
I’ve just read an article on the New Scientist estimating how long it takes for a rainforest to recover after destruction. The good news is that some parts of it can take as little as 65 years to come back to normal - that is, for some trees to grow, and some animal species to feel at home again. The bad news is that to come back to normal takes 4000 years. And that’s not even counting the extinct species - because extinction is forever.
This looks to me like a classic case of "if you can’t fix it, don’t break it.” If it takes 4000 years for a primary forest to come back to normal, we’re going to have to explain our actions to quite a few generations in the future.
This is why logging is illegal in many places - we know it can’t be fixed, and governments decide to protect some areas (though of course, it’s still not enough to really protect species or limit climate change). When these areas are logged illegally, irreparable damage is done. When that wood is sold in the EU, you and me are made unwilling accomplices of a destruction that can last for up to four millenia.
You can stop this. Please send a message to EU Commission President Barroso today, and ask him to do the right thing.
The picture above has been submitted by T h e C h a r l e s to our ForestLove group on flickr. Did you send a photo yet?
It's common practice for big companies to use trade associations and coalitions (with innocent or even nice sounding names) to do lobbying for their vested interests over the public good. That way they can appear to keep their hands clean of any dodgy tactics.
We come across these lobby groups all the time. We've exposed the role of the car industry lobby in Europe recently but it's not often that we see them disappear due to our work. That's what happened last week with the demise of the US based "Electronic Manufacturers Coalition for Responsible Recycling".
Companies "for Responsible Recycling", now that sounds good doesn't it? In fact it really lobbied for the pubic to bear the cost of recycling so that could avoid responsibility for recycling their own old products. TV companies in particular often don't want to have to recycle their old TV's that are filled with toxic chemicals.
We first encountered it after the first version of our Guide to Greener Electronics was released in August 06. The US Computer Take Back Campaign tipped us off that many TV companies featured in the Guide were in the coalition that was actively lobbying in many US states against progressive e-waste recycling bills.
Here's a blog from Jo who attended the climate camp in the UK last week as an independent volunteer.
I recently got back from spending some time in a field with 2000 other people motivated to take action against climate change. Well that’s how many it built up to being over the course of the week. Despite some serious aggression from her majesty’s finest police force, people came from all over to make it the biggest climate camp ever. It was brilliant.
The week long event, one of 8 across the world this year, culminated in a mass day of action last Saturday. Where we caused some serious disruption to Kingsnorth coal fired power plant - owned by energy giant E.On.
I was helping out with media on site and had one of those fantastic days where you’re in the centre of update after update of brilliant news “7 kayaks are on the Medway” and “Greens have breached the inner fence, using – get this- the outer fence as a ladder.” Though of course I couldn’t help being a bit jealous of the Great Rebel Raft Regatta crews, how much fun must that have been!!??
The day of action was amazing, but so was the whole camp. I was overwhelmed by everything the organisers, always working on consensus decision, had achieved. From compost toilets (complete with sign welcoming us to P.On E.On – brilliant!), to kids spaces, workshops on every related topic you could think of and great entertainment.
Greenpeace in the UK has just released a ranking of Tuna brands based on a wide set of environmental criteria, including the way their fish is sourced. In some cases, the fishing method can mean death for large numbers of sea turtles and sharks, or threaten the long term future of tuna itself.
The worst of the worst is Britain's top selling brand, John West.
Sainsbury's came out tops, with only one red mark -- for their failure to express public support the concept of Marine Reserves to protect our oceans.
The Esperanza’s 2000 km anti-coal clean energy tour of Australia (from Sydney to Cairns) ended with a spectacular candle-lit celebration. Local residents and Greenpeace used 3000 candles to build a giant wind turbine. The art installation was sending a clear message to Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd: Australia needs an energy revolution - renewable energy not coal is the only way prevent catastrophic climate change.
Learn more here.
We've all been "ooh-ing" and "aah-ing" over the latest pics taken by our photographer on the Arctic Sunrise in the Mediterranean Sea.
For desktop wallpaper - click here.
You can read more on what this Greenpeace ship has been doing in the Med here and here.
Images © Greenpeace/ Paul Hilton
Michael Dell has no doubt about the aspirations he sets for his company. Make Dell #1 - not only in sales, but also environment. Roughly a year ago, he announced that Dell wants to become the greenest technology company.
The company is committed to phasing out hazardous chemicals like BFRs and PVC in all their products by 2009. But it had not yet done so. Not a single Dell computer is PVC or BFR-free. Dell also claim to provide an almost global take back service for all their products.
An examination of dumpsites in Ghana reveals lots of Dell branded e-waste. It is time for the company to make more effort to get their products back so they do not end up being dumped.
We can't wait to find out who will be #1 in v.9 of Guide to Greener Electronics in September.
No one expected that Steve Balmer is going to have an easy job. Well, everybody talks about how hard it will be for him with Vista not beeing as good and Explorer just catching up on Firefox, Apple getting more popular. The challenges are numerous. And environment is one of them.
Because (suprise suprise to some non-gamers) Microsoft does not only produce software but also hardware. Mouses, keyboards, Zune, XBox and the list is growing. This hardware still contains hazardous chemicals like brominated flame retardants and PVC. And can be seen on the dumpsites, like the one in Accra, Ghana.
So Steve has to rise up to this challenge and clean up Microsoft's act. Ensure that it's products are free of hazardous chemicals and take responsibility for the end of life. This means collection and responsible recycling so they do not end up beeing exported as waste to countries like Ghana. So Steve, do we want to see more action!
Remember that Taiwanese longliner (the one we confronted in the Pacific Commons) that washed up in Bali under suspicious circumstances a few weeks ago? Well it's still stuck on the reef only now there's a lot less of it after it was consumed in flames yesterday.
Unfortunately, oil did leak from the vessel and efforts to remove the Ho Tsai Fa 18, by towing it with other vessels at high tide, have failed.
The boat burned all Tuesday night until lunchtime on Wednesday, when the tide rose high enough to extinguish the flames, said a spokesman for ROLE Foundation, which runs marine projects in the area and has been working with authorities over the last month to salvage the vessel....
Mystery surrounds the 50-tonne fibreglass vessel amid allegations of mutiny and murder. Its Taiwanese captain is missing, presumed dead, and Taiwan sought the help of Indonesian police to search for the Indonesian crew members who fled when it ran aground. However, their investigation stalled with no body, no witnesses and a crime scene compromised by looters who took fish, fuel and equipment.
...
ROLE chairman Chris Moore, a shipbuilder by trade, said that when he heard it had been set alight he had just obtained permission from the ship owner's insurer in Taiwan to allow scrap merchants to take it apart piece-by-piece.
"We are a bit distraught," Moore said.
"Somebody decided the best way to deal with it was to torch it.
"It's an easy way of doing it, but not a very environmentally friendly way of doing it.
...
"There's petrol spilt in the ocean again and there's a big heap of black smouldering fibreglass mess in the lower half of the hull, which could be dragged across the reef," he said.
Let's never do anything like that again. OK?
Remember my blog from a couple of weeks ago, Killing whales to reduce climate change? I don't think so...?
It was about an article in the English-language newspaper, The Japan Times, which quoted Kunio Yonezawa, "a former IWC commissioner and now head of the Japan Overseas Fishing Association", who claimed that whaling is "a green alternative to modern farming".
He also claimed that "'it is a much better way ecologically in terms of climate change instead of (eating) land animals, particularly (when you consider) animal husbandry,'... To produce 1 kg of beef, it takes 18.4 kg of COe greenhouse gas emissions, whereas to produce one kilogram of whale meat it takes 2.9 kg of COe''.
Now a Shigeko Misaki has written a rather terse letter to the Japan Times, countering Kunio Yonezawa claims. Ms Misaki is the author of "The History and Science of Whales," is former advisor to the Japan Whaling Association and former counselor at the infamous Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR). The ICR, you might recall, are the pseudo-scientific agency that carry out Japan's Research Whaling expeditions.
Ms Misaki writes:
"...I now find myself retired and severed from much of the controversy over whaling. However, Internet reports of whaling "progress" thus far persuade me that this season is the most opportune time for Japan's government to decide to withdraw all whaling operations from the Southern Ocean."
Hi there, my name is Will Morris-Julien and I'm a comic artist based in the far west of Wales over here in the UK. Over the last two weeks I have been working with the Greenpeace International Toxic's team on a series of comic strips to highlight the e-waste dumps in Ghana. In our research for the project we listened to the main men in the business talking about how wonderfully green their companies are. They obviously thought of themselves as higher beings. Men, with a message they all thought we should hear. We were so impressed with what they had to say that we thought we'd give them a hand and do a comic called ' The New Heroes of Green?'
I hope that you enjoy the comics. I'll be posting all three over the next three days.
Here's number one Steve 'The Guru' Jobs talking about how wonderful Apple is...
If you remember not to take them personally, the comments on YouTube videos can be quite hilarious. Daniel, the man behind our ForestLove video thankfully has a good sense of humor and therefore was not too offended when he read that he was an "over sexed liberal with NO understanding of his TRUE VALUE TO GOD WHATSOEVER" and also " SUPER LAME as well as STUPID" with a "maturity level... which is that of an ape".
This is I think the worse comment so far under the YouTube video. We've also had a few mentioning everything they disliked about Greenpeace, to finish with "but I like this video". In general, though, I'm really surprised at the positive comments we get, considering how rapacious people can be on YouTube.
The best punch lines, though, came from Gawker comments. My two favourites are "Forest Hump"and "If a tree moans in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound?
Can you think of anything better? Put it under the video!
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