Greenpeace Blog

Facting Aida! Yet again

Posted by ianduff — 15 October 2010 at 2:59pm - Comments
Deforested area in Bukit Tigapuluh, Indonesia. Once important habitat for Sumatran tigers.

Now the arrival in the UK of Aida Greenbury, the Director of Sustainability and Stakeholder Engagement for the notorious Asia Pulp and Paper, is always going to get Greenpeace excited - it’s not often she has to defend her company's actions live and online. But our excitement turned a little sour when APP refused our request to debate Aida directly on Print Week's webcast. Perhaps APP's new PR agency Cohn and Wolfe is advising Aida against talking to us in public.

Article tagged as: APP, deforestation, indonesia, pulp and paper

Princes' tuna policy doesn't do what it says on the tin

Posted by Willie — 15 October 2010 at 10:15am - Comments

Two whole years in the making, Princes' new 'sustainable seafood statement' was supposed to address many issues. Specifically it was supposed to be explaining just what the company intended to do to drag itself from the bottom of our tinned tuna league table by explaining the measures they were implementing to ensure they were sourcing their tinned tuna responsibly.

Article tagged as: fishing, mitsubishi, oceans, princes, sharks, sustainable seafood, tinned tuna, tuna, turtles

Rescuing our oceans, in the International Year of Biodiversity

Posted by Willie — 14 October 2010 at 3:36pm - Comments

Explore our new interactive map - with videos and slideshows explaining why our oceans need Marine Reserves now.

Article tagged as: marine reserves

Leading scientists criticise nuclear weapons research

Posted by jossc — 13 October 2010 at 9:57am - Comments

In a letter in today’s Guardian 36 science professors are calling on the Prime Minister to protect core science funding - by cutting government investment in developing new nuclear weapons. We asked Stuart Parkinson, co-ordinator of the letter, to tell us what it’s all about...

As the announcement of the government’s spending review gets ever closer, the lobbying to defend this or that area of public spending is becoming more and more intense.

Article tagged as: awe aldermaston, nuclear weapons, trident

Oil companies answer to who?

Posted by jamess — 12 October 2010 at 5:55pm - Comments

Now that I'm out of the water, off the Esperanza and back on dry land, I've been thinking about what it takes to stop not just one oil rig but all of them.

There's no dodging the fact that the oil industry is immense. In the North sea, where we confronted Chevron, companies have spent more money on extracting oil in the region than NASA spent putting a man on the moon. In the Gulf of Mexico, where BP's Deepwater Horizon platform exploded this summer, there are over 3,500 other rigs ready to bore away at the seabed.

Article tagged as: BP, chevron, climate change, drilling, financial risk, go beyond oil, legal & general, oil, pension, UN

UPDATE: Climate negotiations from an American girl in China

Posted by jossc — 11 October 2010 at 1:32pm - Comments

Tcktcktck's Paul Horsman delivers a traditional Chinese stamp to UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres to mark the wall in support of collective action against climate change.

Michelle Meideros writes from Tianjin, where the latest round of climate talks have just ended. She has been living and working in Beijing for 6 months and tells us how her perspective has changed this year.

I haven't been to a climate talk since Copenhagen and not a whole lot has changed inside the negotiations. One thing that has changed is how I see this US/China "I won't, until you will" rhetoric. In the US our government is always pointing its finger at China, now the largest emitter in the world, claiming China is to blame, all the while hiding from its own lack of ambition.

Article tagged as: china, climate change, tianjin, UNFCCC

'Defence Day' at Tory party conference - what will the Lib Dems make of it all?

Posted by Louise Edge — 6 October 2010 at 4:26pm - Comments

Dr Fox looks nervous about his Trident budget cc  Steve Punter

Yesterday was, amongst other things, time for the Conservatives to debate defence at their conference.

First up was Dr Liam '13th century' Fox, who declared that we live in a "world more dangerous than any other time in recent memory". Hmmm - what about the Cuban missile crisis, Liam? Or Hitler invading Europe?

Article tagged as: party conferences, trident

Are you a secret superhero?

Posted by jamess — 4 October 2010 at 1:34pm - Comments

Scrubbing the toilets this morning a bizarre thought crossed my mind: I’m going to miss this. The squeaky whiteboard, with our names for the 8am cleaning rota, reads: Messroom/Leila, Lounge/Frank, Showers/Victor, Alleyways/Elena, Laundry/Ben and Toilets … James.

A strange thing to miss perhaps, cleaning the ‘heads’ – my ship lingo is rapidly expanding – but it’s another part of the daily routine that has defined the communal life on board our floating Esperanza.

This is a working ship and everyone is busy pretty much all the time. Whether it’s in the engine room, the galley, the fitter’s workshop, the Radio Operator’s room, up on the bridge or out on deck, there are always things to do, just to keep a ship going.

Article tagged as: cairn, chevron, climate change, go beyond oil, oil spill

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