MENU
Categories
Archives
Political team updates
Here are updates from our work on a political and corporate lobbying level.
July 9, 2008Bye, bye Toyako
Daniel Mittler about to leave the G8 Summit in Toyako, Japan
There are a lot empty water bottles and even more coffee cups lying around the International Media Centre at the G8. The rooms are slowly emptying out and the faces of those remaining are drained and tired. As I am sure is mine. The last three days were wasted days for addressing the global crises we face. But at least we managed to counter the predictable, positive spin leaders put on the pathetic statements they put out here. For one (of gladly many) good media stories on the united NGO reaction against the G8 climate deal click here. Our Home, the Planet needs action. All it got here, was 8 leaders' signatures who failed to do what is needed ...
Bush's Major Economies Meeting comes to useless end
Bush's Major Economies Meeting is now over. And it was, surprise, surprise, a complete waste of time. You can find the statement here. And here is our reaction: “President Bush’s Major Economies Meeting has been a useless diversion from real action on climate change all along; the meaningless statement released today proves that for all to see. As low-lying island states are drowning, Bush’s MEM emits even more hot air. Because of the G8’s abject failure to commit to anything meaningful, there could be no move forward. On the issues that matter – such as 2020 emission reduction targets for industrialised countries – the statement is deathly silent.
Fast and efficient security!
The weather has improved a bit since the constant rain on Monday. But the sun didn't shine on the world's leaders here. And they didn't deserve that either. The G8 has failed. But they did give a lot of security guards work. Loads of security guards! For some - working for a security firm called Rising Sun - the work was even fun, I think. They got to move around on Segways (see picture). Frankly, those of us who had to run around on foot between the many far flung buildings the International Media Centre was made up of - we were quite jealous! The security guards also got a lot of media, who were impressed by the fast, clean and efficient vehicles. At least for the security...
Maldives call on G8: Don't let us drown
It's the last day of the G8 - and hopefully the last day of Bush's Major Emitters/ Economies meetings. Today, countries representing 80 percent of global emissions will be holding talks. They will not make progress - because the G8 refused to move forward yesterday. The developing countries like South Africa, China and India are willing to move. But they expect the developed world, which is mainly responsible for climate change, to do their fair share - which they spectacularly failed to do yesterday. - The people who will not be here today, though, are those most affected by climate change. That is outrageous. That is immoral. It is one of the main reasons why Bush's Major Economies Meeting, like Bush, needs to be history. - As the MEM gets underway, the Republic of Maldives therefore issued the following urgent plea. Powerful words, that remind us of what is at stake:
G8 climate statement: if this is a step forward - we will never get there!
The G8 climate statement is out (see here). The leaders will spin this as a good step forward. Sadly, it is not. Here is our reaction: “The G8 have failed the world again. While the Arctic is melting, the G8 are postponing action. Instead of climate protection, the world got nothing but flowery words. If this is a step forward, we will never prevent climate chaos in time. The 2050 vision will be a nightmare, unless the world ends its fossil fuel addiction and starts an energy revolution based on renewable energies and energy efficiency – now! But an oil man from Texas has again prevented the decisive action the world needs. Instead of creating solutions, the G8 are continuing to fuel the problem. The World Bank Climate Investment Funds that the G8 has
announced do not exclude coal – the world’s most polluting energy source. The World Bank Funds are a step in the wrong direction. The only good news from this summit is that it is Bush’s last.”
Solving the food crisis?
If you look at the G8 agenda, most of it is about food. There is a working lunch, a working dinner, another working lunch. And then there is the photo call. And then - that's it. How appropriate, then, that they have been talking about the global food crisis while munching away at their Japanese specialities. Sadly, what they have been saying has not made much sense. Bush, Berlusconi and others have been pushing for genetically engineered food as the solution to the food crisis. They have all pretended the liberalizing trade will lower food prices, which it will not. All it will do is drive poor farmers, especially in the developing world off their land. There has been some talk about how unsustainable biofuels are part of the problem - but no decision to, say, stop clearing land for biofuels. To add insult to injury, there is a lot of really overpackaged food all over the media centre. Another way to solve the food crisis? One overpackaged water melon piece at a time? These summits do sure make your head spin! You keep calm, though, and find out here why biodiversity and ecological farming is the real solution to the food crisis!
Rain in a ski resort - a sad but appropriate G8 start ...
Update from Daniel at the G8:
The G8 leaders have been hiding from the people they claim to represent in ever more remote places in recent years. But the summit here at Toyako, Hokkaido, takes the idea of "hiding far, far away" to perfection. Even the media centre is kilometres away from where Bush, Fukuda, Merkel and Co. are meeting. Toyako - and the area around it - is said to be beautiful. It is difficult to judge right now, I have to say, as it is raining cats and dogs. The mountains, said to be magical, are hardly even visible. The mist is not romantic, but really just low-lying rain clouds. As this is a ski area, that has received less and less snow fall in recent years, I guess the weather is fitting. This is what it will be like in Toyako - and other ski areas - even in winter. Unless our leaders act. Will they?
G8 updates coming
Please stand by. Our team will be posting updates here straight from the G8.
Athena at the UN
An international Greenpeace contingent attended yesterday's high level UN meeting on climate change. Athena was there and felt compelled to put down her thoughts on the meeting. Here they are:
My name is Athena and I have been called a climate “policy wonk,” having followed the climate negotiating process for almost 15 years. Today though I write as a mother...
While waiting for the opening of the UN High Level Summit on Climate Change here in New York, the cheerful faces of my three children Gab, Gio and Gavin keep flashing into my mind.
They have been my inspiration, my driving force...ensuring their safe future and a healthy environment for them to grow into have been at the core of my work with the environmental movement and with Greenpeace in particular. And Dr. Pachauri (head of the UN’s scientific body) once again outlined why we all, especially those parents, need to stay involved on this issue.
Greenwashing, Bluewashing and much rain in Geneva
Another update from straight talking policy adviser Daniel:
Last week was not a good one to be a tourist in Geneva. It was raining cats and dogs and as a private individual you could not get a tour of the United Nations headquarters. This beautiful building was open only for business leaders as the Second Global Compact Leaders Summit was bringing the UN Secretary General and several hundred CEOs to town. So much for openness and transparency.
The Global Compact sounds like a good idea. Its principles are worthy. They are about human rights and environmental protection and fighting corruption. The trouble is: The Compact does not enforce these principles at all. Global Compact Principle 7, for example, calls for a "precautionary approach to environmental challenges". That sounds good. Greenpeace likes precaution - which basically means that if you are not certain if something is safe or not, well, you don’t do it. Yet companies that ignore precaution by producing genetically modified organisms, such as Novartis, are members of the Compact. Areva, which produces dangerous nuclear power are allowed to be members of the Pact. The UN is endangering a very high value good, it's reputation, by associating its name with such activities through the Global Compact. It's called "bluewash" - looking good by associating yourself with the UN.
G8 wrap: Waffle, reheated anyone?
Update from Daniel at the summit -
As G8 leaders are just sitting down for their last lunch, a special G8 menu has mysteriously appeared at the G8 media centre. They have served us nice cake and coffee here over the last few days. But the G8 leaders clearly were not content with sipping champagne behind the security fence and served up a different menu to the rest of the world. After a cocktail they sat down to "eight prawns grilled under a warm climate" and they finished off their meal with a "Not so Easy to Digestif". I wish our leaders put as much effort into saving our planet as some wonderful NGO colleagues put into this funny spoof!
The G8 did not deliver what they needed to. But I leave Heiligendamm more upbeat than I expected. Greenpeace did a wonderful and dramatic action, that - as one TV presenter today told me - "produced the best Greenpeace pictures in years". We raised the temperature on climate change and now have a real fighting chance to achieve progress at the next climate conference in Bali in December. The G8 failed the world, no question about it. But the G8 also felt the pressure from the real world - from all of you. We live to fight another day. Please help us build up the pressure further. You can start by joining our energy revolution
.
Stirring it up at the G8 - and seeing our message get through
[ © Axel Schmidt/DDP ]
Jo is our very busy press officer at the summit's media centre. Here's her first hand account from today.
From Jo:
It wasn't until I saw the footage on the super-sized screens in the media centre that I really realized what was happening. A full on police chase with Greenpeace RIBS (rigid inflatable boats). As I watched, a police boat rammed one of our inflatables, knocking activists into the water. Six of our people suffered severely heavy bruising, but fortunately no one was more seriously hurt.
I ran out to the balcony, overlooking the beach - where we were holding a press conference. What I found was a massive crowd of people, cameras and notebooks everywhere. I pushed my way to the front - and lo and behold, there were more Greenpeace boats, being chased by police right in front of us.
It was an amazing feeling seeing the boats go past, with a huge crowd watching a seriously great action. I lost Daniel and Tobias in a surge of media interviews, as I ran back in to get a press release ready.
Greenpeace reaction to G8 climate deal
Here's the statement from our team at the summit:
Greenpeace condemned G8 leaders for failing to live up to their historic responsibility for climate change by not agreeing to keep mean temperature rise below 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. The deal is "clearly not enough to prevent dangerous climate change" said Daniel Mittler, climate policy advisor of Greenpeace International.
Greenpeace welcomed that the G8 gave a political mandate for a start of serious negotiations for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol to start at the climate negotiations in Bali in December.
The US isolation in refusing to accept binding emission cuts has become obvious at this meeting. "The Bush administration have agreed to "seriously consider" that the rest of the world is setting reduction targets, but is as far away as from agreeing to such targets themselves as ever" said Mittler.
Greenpeace reminded the G8 governments that they need to reduce their emissions by 80-90% by 2050 if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change. "Governments failed to commit to what science tells us is necessary here. They must now urgently do so at the United Nations."
Into the exclusion zone at the G8
Update: Just found more footage and photos on der Spiegel.
Update 2: Just got good news, some severe bruising and one activist will have to stay in the hospital a bit longer - but no serious injuries. The boats and 19 people remain in police custody.
Climate change is a global emergency. Yet, despite the mountains of scientific evidence, that message apparently isn't getting through to our world leaders. Today, Blair seemed to cave to Bush on the idea of the G8 agreeing to specific carbon dioxide reduction targets. Without specific goals it's all talk, mutual backslapping and more procrastination - just what the Bush administration wants.
So this morning, 24 Greenpeace activists, using 11 speedboats took the message "G8: Act Now!" to the waters around the Heilingendamm summit. They entered the outer restricted area at 11am, informing the police as they did so. They came in from both east and west sides, entering into the inner restricted zone 10 minutes later.
The story so far
Officially, it's only day two of the summit, but there's already been a tons of political drama. For those of you just coming to the story, Greenpeace UK has a good overview up on their site. Here's an excerpt:
So the sleeves are being rolled up on all sides for an intense bout of negotiation. What would success look like?Well, it's all down to Merkel, and how far she's willing to push it. Leaving aside the possibility that Bush has a Damascene conversion and decides he wants to adopt ambitious, mandatory targets through the UN, the next best result will be for Merkel to ignore him, and focus on the seven other G8 countries that have ratified Kyoto.
If Bush keeps trying to sabotage the process, Merkel needs to keep pushing forward, without worrying about the US. If these seven countries can agree on mandatory and meaningful emissions reduction targets, working within the UN framework, then the G8 will have been a success.
Merkel and Bush
My favorite headline of the G8 so far, "Bush, Merkel vow to fight poverty, disagree on climate". This follows what was apparently a very nice lunch meeting between the two of them. From the article:
"But Bush made no reference to Merkel's demands that G8 leaders commit to cutting global greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 and limiting the worldwide temperature rise this century to 2 degrees Celsius.Merkel, for her part, recognized that while the US and Germany agreed on combating poverty in Africa, there were other "areas here and there" which needed further discussion."
In perhaps not unrelated news, today German police boarded the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise - even though it was well outside the summit security zone. The police boarded without a search warrant and confined the 24 crew before seizing Greenpeace equipment including engines from inflatables, making the boats unusable, and the hull of a Greenpeace hot air balloon.
I wonder if, at any point during the lunch, Merkel and George "there ought to be limits to free speech" Bush touched on how far a government should go to ensure that leaders of the world's wealthiest nations can meet without the inconvenience of protest.
Greenpeace statement in response Merkel/Bush comments today.
From the BBC: Who are the G8 protesters?
Human banner
In total, more than 600 people formed this human banner in the city harbour of Rostock! It said, "G8: ACT NOW!" Underneath the human banner, a second banner read "Stop Global Warming."
[photo: © Greenpeace / Guenther Menn]
Snowmen and Elvis against global warming
Update from Agnes: Several members of the Solar Generation, together with students from People and Planet, took part yesterday in a largely peaceful G8 demonstration in Rostock.
Carrying huge banners and inflatable snowmen, people marched from Schlutuper Kreuz to the Rostock City Harbour to call on G8 leaders to take action on climate change. Leaders from the Group of 8 countries are meeting in Heiligendamm next week to discuss issues like social justice, climate change, and trade liberalisation. There were a number of riots during the demonstration but these involved only a few protesters.
Cheng qian of Solar Generation China delivered a speech before 80.000 people!, urging the G8 to ACT NOW. The Solar Drums group, as well as volunteers from Greenpeace Germany, were also there to join the demonstration.
[photo: © Greenpeace / Salvatore Barbera (Giona)]
New World Bank head nominated
More from Daniel, one of our political advisors, on changes at the World Bank:
Bush has done it again. The US President has put loyalty ahead of merit by choosing Robert Zoellick as the new head of the World Bank. I have known Zoellick for a while. He was Bush's trade representative from 2001-2005. In that role, he pursued free trade at all costs at the World Trade Organization (WTO). In 2003, he started a WTO attack on Europe's genetic engineering restrictions.
In 2003, at the failed WTO talks in Cancun, Mexico, Zoellick famously threatened developing countries, that the US will pursue market access for US corporations to developing world markets in whichever way they see fit. I remember listening to his press conference with a certain shiver running down my spine.
Wanted - Energy Revolution leader for Asia
Athena is the face of Greenpeace's climate and energy campaign in Asia. She has just returned from Kyoto, where she led a team pressuring the Asian Development Bank to put their money where their mouths are and invest in Clean Energy. Here's her round up.
2 weeks ago I welcomed myself back to the city of Kyoto with high expectations: for the Asian Development Bank to honour the spirit of one of the most important environmental agreements in history – the Kyoto Protocol.
I finally got to see Kyoto on the last day of my visit to this historic city. A visit to the Kiyomizu-dera Temple and a walk along Gion made me appreciate its beauty – something I missed10 years ago during my first visit. The people of Kyoto should be proud of their home. The ADB could have made them even prouder, but they were a few steps short…
Kimono girls make a difference
Each 5th of May, Japan celebrates Children’s Day, or more specifically Boy’s Day. But this May 5th, 6 women from different sides of the world braved discomfort and made a stand to make a change. The 6 women were Solar Generation delegates working with Greenpeace to pressure the Asian Development Bank to fund the energy revolution at their annual meeting in Kyoto. To get our message across and to bring some colour to what was otherwise a boring meeting, we decided to stage a performance in keeping with our surroundings at the meeting's opening reception.
ADB - Honour Kyoto!
So, back at the Kyoto International Conference Centre. I, Athena, Greenpeace International’s Asia climate campaigner, was here in December 1997. I was one of many, negotiating a historic agreement: The Kyoto Protocol . It still is the only legally binding global agreement aimed at stopping climate change. Today, ten years on, I am here to attend the 40th Annual General Meeting of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) . I am here to deliver a simple message. If the ADB wants to honour Kyoto, it must agree concrete steps for saving the climate at this historic place. It must decide to quit coal and put all its resources into funding a sustainable energy revolution in Asia.
Die in to protest coal power
Under a (literally) stormy sky Greenpeace activists staged a "die in" today at the annual general meeting of Asia’s largest privately owned power utility - China Light and Power (CLP). Local activists where joined at the Hong Kong protest by representatives from communities in the Philippines, Tuvalu and Australia that suffer from coal industry pollution and climate change.
CLP derives most of its electricity from coal, and CLP’s CO2 emissions in 2006 were the highest in 14 years.
The twenty activists blockaded entrances at the meeting venue, enacting scenes of the climate devastation already being caused by CLP’s record levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Activists lay in front of 9 huge tombstones to symbolise the human cost of CLP’s activities across the Asia-Pacific. Two activists were able to get into the meeting as shareholders, and took their message directly to CLP's chairman.
Search
Burn our feed!
Get Making Waves via email
Latest Comments
Lisa on Vegemite or Marmite - definitely NOT tuna...
Erwin Acke on 10,000 Dance for a Climate Deal
Eoin Dubsky on Google Trends
engineer agbonifo michal on Illegal e-waste export to Nigeria tracked down
Climatarians | J. Hoogstrate on What makes Europe greener than the US?
sydneyland on Google, Microsoft and IBM: Bring it on for the Climate
Patricia on AREVA takes ass-kicking from own nuclear reactor
Ari T. on AREVA takes ass-kicking from own nuclear reactor
roy kenyon on Moms against climate change
Blogroll
Technorati & Stuff
 |  |
