Greenpeace opposes the U.S. Star Wars Missile plan because such a system would ignite a new nuclear arms race. Should the plan go ahead Americans will spend hundreds of billions of tax dollars for a technically flawed scheme that offers only the illusion of protection. There will also be increased nuclear dangers in a world where there are far more nuclear weapons as countries such as China bolster their nuclear arsenals to overcome Star Wars. "Star Wars" sole beneficiaries will be U.S.
Greenpeace uses the term "Star Wars" to describe U.S government's proposed National Missile Defence (NMD) because of the current plan's similarity to the "Star Wars" plan promoted by defence contractors and President Ronald Reagan in the 1980's. "Star Wars" is a system of radars and satellites used to detect incoming missiles. These radars and satellites are intended to communicate information to missiles launched from the U.S. to enable them to intercept and destroy the incoming enemy missiles before they reach their target. As yet, the plan remains a only a theory.
That this House expresses concern at President Bush's intention to move beyond the constraints of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in developing missile defence...
When President Bush announced in March 2001 that the US would be pulling out of the Kyoto Treaty, the mark of the fossil fuel industry was all over his policy. One company stands out from the rest as having done more than any other to bring about Bush's climate climb-down. For the last 10 years Esso (ExxonMobil in the US) has been working consistently and systematically to derail any international action to tackle global warming.
Getting renewable energy to the world's poorTwo billion people one in three of us on the planet live without the basic energy services such as electricity that the rest of us take for granted. Every day they have to meet their essential needs with expensive, dirty and unreliable energy sources such as kerosene lamps, candles and fuel wood. These damage people's health, reinforce the cycle of poverty and contribute to environmental destruction. This can and must change.
Greenpeace has consistently argued that genetically modified (GM) crops should not be released into the environment, and since 1996 that they should not be introduced into the food chain. This view is shared by much of the British public. GM ingredients have been removed from most human food products; now attention is turning to the feeding of GM crops to animals.
Polls by the major supermarkets have shown clearly that consumers do not want animals to be fed GM diets:
The majority of the world's carbon pollution comes from oil products like petrol and diesel. We can avoid a runaway greenhouse effect but only if we break our addiction to fossil fuels and make the transition to an economy run on renewable energy and hydrogen.
Fossil fuel use is already changing our climate. The arctic ice cap has already thinned from 10ft to 6ft in the last 20 years as a result of warmer seas. Scientists predict that the entire polar ice cap could disappear every summer within the next 50 years....
