photo: Greenpeace
The saga of the two Greenpeace activists arrested over two years ago for stealing whale meat from a shipping depot, in an effort to expose corruption within Japan's whaling program, is over. Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki were given one-year jail terms, suspended, for theft and trespassing. Prosecutors had wante...Read the full story on TreeHugger
I just wrote the other day on four Greenpeace activists, dubbed the “Arctic Defenders,” who climbed an oil rig in the Arctic and occupied it (hanging above cold Arctic waters) for 40 hours before coming down and being arrested by the Greenland police.
Their friendly Greenpeace colleagues and partners in Greenpeace’s ‘Go Beyond Oil’ tour were hoping that after being released from jail, the four would rejoin them on their boat, the Esperanza, and they’d complete the tour together. News is that won’t be the case. The four young men are being deported to their home countries now. Fellow ‘Go Beyond Oil’ activist Lisa writes:
Jens, Sim, Timo and Matt are flying home to Germany, USA, Finland and Poland respectively. Their personal belongings are still on board and they are going home in spare clothes bought for them by friends in Greenland. I’m sure they’ll be glad to see their families again but we’re really going to miss them on the ship and we haven’t finished our ‘Go Beyond Oil’ tour yet.
Yesterday we were hoping they would be back on board and Victor even made them a Welcome Home banner. I have sent them all the supportive messages people wrote us over the last few days by email.
For more on this story and a few photos of Jens, Sim, Timo and Matt, head on over to Greenpeace International’s ‘Making Waves’ blog.
Hopefully these four young activists accomplished enough in their time in the Arctic and through their heroic efforts there to lessen the amount of oil being pulled from the Arctic, burned, and turned into global warming pollution, and to help generate enough social consciousness and political will to stop deepwater oil drilling in the Arctic before we have oil disasters there that ruins its fragile and precious ecosystems.
Photo Credit: StephYo via flickr
Greenpeace has had a campaign going on both on Facebook and off telling Facebook to “Unfriend Coal.” In other words, Greenpeace and 500,000 supporters (so far) are urging Facebook to stop using energy from dirty coal plants.
The Executive Director of Greenpeace International, Kumi Naidoo, recently got into the discussion and wrote a letter to Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
In the comments section of that blog post, Barry Schnitt, Director of Policy Communications at Facebook, wrote a lengthy response, the heart of which was basically this: coal is bad and the world needs to use more renewable energy but Facebook has no power over the power mix they are supplied.
If he thought that was going to pacify Greenpeace or the half a million people behind this campaign, I’m not sure how he got his job at Facebook.
Greenpeace policy analyst Gary Cook responds with a lengthy letter of his own. Here is the beginning of this letter:
Dear Barry:
Thanks for your response.
We appreciate your recognition that Facebook has a coal problem with its Oregon data center. However, where we disagree is your claim to be powerless to do anything about it as, like Greenpeace and others, Facebook simply has to buy whatever electricity is available. This is not the case for Greenpeace, and is certainly not the case for Facebook, who is an industrial scale consumer of electricity.
As evidenced by the 500,000 users who have asked Facebook to get off of coal, we expect and demand more leadership from such an innovative company that is a playing an important role in bringing the world together.
Facebook is buying electricity in bulk to meet the needs of 500 million+ users, and is becoming a very influential company both inside and outside the IT sector. The expected power consumption of the Oregon data center alone gives Facebook the purchasing power of 30,000-40,000 homes, which gives you the ability and standing to shape how power is generated in Oregon and far beyond.
As we have seen with other environmental challenges, motivated companies with big purchasing power can make a powerful difference in driving environmental solutions and policy change. Greenpeace’s recent campaign targeting Nestlé (using Facebook no less) over their purchase of palm oil that is destroying the rainforest in Indonesia led the company to change its procurement policy, and has now led Burger King to announce yesterday that they will no longer buy palm oil from this supplier. This is sending a powerful signal both to the marketplace and to the policy makers in Indonesia and well beyond….
I imagine the conversation will continue on. And, hopefully, Facebook will get the point that they can and should do more. If you haven’t already joined the Facebook group or the campaign, you can do so now in order to tell Facebook that coal is a technology of the past that needs to be dropped and Facebook has the power to help unfriend coal!
Photo Credit: Greenpeace
In one of the most amazing Greenpeace actions I’ve heard of, four Greenpeace activists climbed an oil rig in the Arctic this week and stopped oil drilling there for two days. Yesterday, announcing the end of the occupation and the arrest of the four activists who occupied the rig, another Greenpeace activist in the Arctic wrote this:
Well that was dramatic. Yesterday afternoon the seas started churning and our huge banner on the oil rig was twisting and flapping as a gale blew up. I spoke to the four activists under the rig and they assured me they were fine. They had self-heating meals and water and were still doing interviews, telling the world about Cairn Energy’s plans to spark an Arctic oil rush.
I kept eyeing the scene through the porthole in my cabin with concern. The swell was heaving and the lips of the waves were breaking white across the stretch of sea separating the Esperanza from the rig. The weather forecast on the screen on the bridge looked ominous – lots of grim symbols over the coast west of Greenland – while a quick duck outside had my eyes watering with the cold.
Ending the occupation of the Stena Don was a big call for us. We’d stopped it drilling for oil here, while the other rig being operated by Cairn was also closed down due to our actions. Think about that – because of the millions of supporters who let us operate our ships, four ordinary blokes from four different countries were able to come up here and put their bodies in the way of the Arctic oil rush, and they stopped it.
They didn’t just protest about it – they actually stopped it. The drills stopped turning.
The weather up there where the activists were became too harsh, apparently, causing the activists to come down and into the hands of the Greenland police waiting for them. Ben, the activist writing above, continued on:
But now a freezing gale has stopped us. Anybody who saw the images of our camp under the rig will appreciate how harsh the conditions were last night for the guys. When I radioed them and talked about the need to come down they were disappointed the direct action was about to end, but stunningly professional. Straight away they were working out how to get safely on to the platform gantry, where police were waiting for them (our guys obsess about safety, it’s a thing to behold, and is at odds with the image our opponents like to paint).
So they’re in police custody now. But before it was over I spoke to Sim McKenna from the United States. He’s been a star these past three weeks since we left London, and as ever he found the words at the right time, despite hanging under an oil rig over freezing seas as a storm rolled in.
“We stopped this rig drilling for oil for two days, but in the end the Arctic weather beat us. Last night was freezing and now the sea below us is churning and the wind is roaring. It’s time to come down, but we’re proud we slowed the mad rush for Arctic oil, if only for a couple of days.”
“This beautiful fragile arctic environment would be decimated by an oil spill. The melting Arctic ice is a grim reminder that we need to stop burning oil and invest instead in clean energy solutions.”
“I’m not sure what will happen to us now, but as soon as we can we’ll be back to call for the world to finally go beyond oil. It is time for people everywhere to take a stand, to call on their governments to fight climate change, ban dangerous deep sea drilling and invest in clean energy solutions that will protect the world’s fragile environments from cowboy oil companies like Cairn Energy.”
The Greenpeace activists, Sim, Timo, Jens and Matt, are reportedly still in prison, but being treated well by the Greenland police.
The area where these Cairn Energy oil rigs are located is both very precious and very fragile. From another article on this activist effort, Greenpeace wrote:
The oil drilling rigs are operating in an area known locally as ‘iceberg alley’. Cairn Energy regularly has to tow icebergs out of the rigs paths or uses water cannons to divert them. If the icebergs are too large then the company will have to move the rig itself to avoid a collision. Last month, a 260 square kilometer ice island broke off the Petermann glacier north of Disko island and will eventually make its way south through Nares Strait into Baffin Bay and the Labrador Current making these dangerous operations a reality once again….
Baffin Bay is home to 80 to 90 percent of the world’s Narwhal whales. The region is also home to blue whales, polar bears, seals, sharks, cormorants, kittiwakes and numerous other migratory birds. Don’t let Cairn Energy continue to gamble with dangerous drilling in the Arctic.
The activist effort only stopped drilling there for 2 days, but that is quite a big deal. And the hope is that that will be enough to have a huge effect, potentially suspending the oil exploration for another year or indefinitely.
Last week Cairn Energy claimed it had struck gas and was optimistic it would strike oil. By stopping it drilling for two days, Cairn Energy might now struggle to meet a tight deadline to complete the exploration before winter ice conditions force it to abandon the search for oil off Greenland until next year. We’d hoped to stay longer, we’d hoped to extend the shut down to run Cairn out of time to finish its exploration programme before the harsh winter weather forces them out of the region until next year. A year is a long time: enough time, we hope, to get a global ban on deep sea oil drilling.
For constant updates on this action and other Greenpeace news via Greenpeace International.
You don’t need to climb an oil rig in the arctic to help stop this dangerous and unnecessary work, but you can take action by signing a letter to Cairn Energy and by going green in ways that help to reduce our dependence on oil.
Image Credit: screenshot of YouTube video above
The Greenpeace vessel MV Arctic Sunrise will set sail Thursday morning from Saint Petersburg, Florida, and tour the southern tip of Florida and its Keys before moving northward to where the Deepwater Horizon exploded.
“From the very start, the full scope of the Gulf oil disaster has been obscured by BP and even our own government,” said John Hocevar, Greenpeace USA Oceans Campaign Director.
“The largest accidental oil spill in history and the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants will impact Gulf marine life for years to come, and independent research is critical to ensure that BP is not allowed to hide what they have done or walk away from their responsibilities,” Hocevar argued.
The MV Arctic Sunrise will “host independent scientists who will be researching the impacts of oil and chemical dispersants on Gulf ecosystems and marine life,” Hocevar added. The scientists will be looking at the ecosystem from plankton to coral reefs and everything in between.
Source: PhysOrg
Below is a great guest post on ‘green cell phones’ by Dan Harding of CalFinder Home Solar Power. Enjoy! And we hope you find it useful!
By Dan Harding
Cell phones have essentially become an extension of the human body in most of the developed world. Although they are not the greenest products, with vampire chargers, excessive manufacturing, and recycling inadequacies, some companies are attempting to change that. Not surprisingly, many of the greenest cell phones come from some of the greenest cell phone companies in the marketplace. But in addition to phone manufacturers, cell phone carriers are also going green—two of them in a big way.
#1—AT&T. AT&T is the greenest cell phone operator in North America, according to a 2009 study by ABI Research. AT&T wins due to its focus on green innovation and research and development (see the famous Bell Labs). The company is open and detailed about its carbon emissions and reduction plans, and actively engaged in smart grid infrastructure. AT&T, says ABI, has the greenest mobile network on the continent.
#2—Sprint/Nextel. Following AT&T closely in ABI’s green rankings is Sprint. The company is a leader in implementation of green products—green handsets, handset recycling, green buildings and green information technology (IT). Sprint also drives greenness throughout its supply chain, says ABI, facilitating greener handsets (Sprint carries those green Samsung phones) and greener networks. Sprint has ambitious eco-friendly company goals, including improving its recycling rate to 90% (from about 35% today) by 2020.
#3—Nokia. While the ABI Research study focused on wireless carriers, a separate (annual) study by Greenpeace International ranks electronics manufacturers for their sustainability. Nokia tops that list. Nokia has phased out toxic chemicals from its phones. Its CEO has come out publicly in support of a 30% reduction in GHG emissions by industrialized countries before 2020. Nokia also scores well on energy, aiming for 50% renewables and company CO2 emissions reduction of 18% by the end of 2010.
#4—Sony Ericsson. Second to Nokia on the Greenpeace scale is Sony Ericsson. The company scores full marks on all chemicals criteria, with absolutely no toxic chemicals to be found in their phones any longer. The company is also lobbying the European Union for even stricter regulations on chlorinated and brominates. Sony Ericsson gets 40% of its energy from renewable resources as well.
#5—Motorola. Motorola has not yet but has a goal in place to eliminate polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFR) from all of its mobile devices after 2010. As mentioned above, all Motorola’s phones are already PVC-free and with MOTO Renew the company is exploring recycled and recyclable phone production as well as certified carbon-neutrality for its products.
Dan Harding is a well-versed veteran of solar critique, commentary and reporting. CalFinder Home Solar Power is proud to tout Dan as their solar expert. He has published over 1,000 articles on a wide variety of solar industry topics, ranging from cutting-edge technology and gadgetry to political satire and powerful editorials.
Photo Credit: millicent_bystander via flickr under a Creative Commons license