press releases

Edinburgh garage: leaflets

Picture opportunity:
The Greenpeace Green Garage is a disused garage which has been made over by Greenpeace volunteers to look just like a real petrol station, complete with pumps, attendants and a price sign. Greenpeace will be dispensing free green fuel to motorists from 9.30 - 4.30.

BP branding

Oil giant BP has attempted to block four shareholder resolutions on the environment and human rights, due to be debated at the BP AGM on 19th April, using archaic 19th Century case law. The company is attempting to rule the resolutions out of order on a legal technicality.

Greenpeace today attacked the government for announcing new GM trial sites (1) despite the fact a review into how imported Canadian seed was contaminated with GM has yet to be completed.

Greenpeace wrote to Environment Minister Michael Meacher outlining their concerns last week. In the letter Greenpeace called on the Government to remove the flower heads from all GM crops currently growing to prevent contamination of surrounding farms and to halt new GM trials.

Greenpeace described today's announcement by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) as "A shocking indictment of Sellafield's continuing safety crisis."

In particular the NII reported today that BNFL has so far failed to fully implement 25 of the 28 Sellafield site safety recommendations the NII made last year, and that it expects full completion to take until the end of 2002.

As BP today announced fourth quarter profits of $4.1 billion - and a net profit for 2000 of over $14.2 billion - Greenpeace demanded that the company immediately increase its "miserly" investment in renewable energy.

Stephanie Tunmore, Climate Campaigner at Greenpeace, said "These obscene profits are being generated at the expense of the world's climate. We will all eventually pay the price as more frequent floods, storms and extreme weather events take their toll. This money should be ploughed straight back into expanding renewable energy to mitigate climate change. If BP won't do this of its own volition, then the Government should ensure it happens with stringent taxes."

The international anti-nuclear and environmental organisation Greenpeace announced today that the SV Rainbow Warrior has set sail from Auckland, New Zealand for the Pacific Star Wars test site, to protest at the next scheduled test of the system and to call on U.S. President George W Bush to scrap the programme.

A special Intersessional meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) opens today in Monaco to "make further progress" on a Scheme that, if agreed, will take the world significantly closer to the resumption of large-scale commercial whaling.

The Revised Management Scheme (RMS) aims to establish a set of rules (including those covering inspection and observation) that would be used if the IWC agreed to allow countries to hunt whales for commercial purposes again. In the past, commercial whaling brought many whale populations to the brink of extinction - a fact which led the IWC to agree to an international moratorium on all commercial whaling, which has been in effect since 1986.