Posted by jossc — 14 August 2008 at 3:01pm
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The crew of the Prolific discarding their catch
So at last the sheer waste involved in modern trawling has been captured on camera. Last week a Norwegian coastguard cutter filmed the crew of a Shetland trawler, the Prolific, openly dumping over 5,000 kg of cod and other dead white fish in UK waters. Now this footage is rightly causing a wave of revulsion in the media at the scale of unnecessary waste at a time of rapidly rising food prices and, ironically, when our own Prime Minister is telling us not to waste food.
Posted by jamie — 31 July 2008 at 3:53pm
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The bad news is that the vote on illegal timber amongst members of the European Commission has been delayed (they're looking at legislation to ban dodgy wood from Europe) and now probably won't take place until September. The good news is that it gives us all a chance to have some fun in the meantime (and do some creative campaigning at the same time).
We all love forests and we want you to show the powers that be in the EU just how much. The forests have already made their own effort, but here's what we'd like you to do:
Posted by jamie — 23 June 2008 at 10:19am
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Just one of the many actions we've taken to expose the government's shoddy approach to illegal timber
Over the past few years, we've done plenty of
work to highlight the problem of illegally
logged timber being imported and sold in the UK - remember the government's repeated
foul-ups in this area? It's insane, but we still don't have any laws
preventing illegal timber from places like the Amazon and south-east Asia
reaching our shores, nor does any other country in Europe.
Posted by jamie — 27 May 2008 at 5:31pm
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Protests by lorry drivers in London
and Wales
today show the strength of feeling surrounding fuel prices and, as oil hit
US$135 a barrel last week, they're unlikely to fall anytime soon. Hauliers want
the government to abandon proposed 2p tax increase and so ease the pain, but
that would only be a short-term fix for a long-term problem - what's really
needed is affirmative action on setting minimum fuel efficiency standards for
road transport.
Which is why, if you happened to be in Brussels yesterday morning,
you would have seen a bizarre site - six cavemen and women travelling the
streets in Flintstones-esque car. (Don't believe me? Watch the video.) They
were exposing the stone age thinking (geddit?) of
the car industry who, lead by German car manufacturers, have been stifling
attempts to improve car efficiency and reduce CO2 exhaust emissions for 17
years. First stop was the headquarters of the car manufacturer's lobby group,
the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA), to deliver copies of a new report about the
impact their industry is having on climate change.
Bottom trawling, possibly the most destructive fishing method yet devised by man, is to be regulated across the whole North Atlantic ocean. The process, which involves dragging nets weight down by metal girders across the seabed, is notorious for its wastefulness. Besides legitimate target species such as cod, plaice and sole, vast quantities of corals, sponges and other deep sea creatures are destroyed as bycatch. The devastation caused is so great that Greenpeace has been calling for some time for a moritorium (suspension of activity) on bottom trawling. Now it looks as though some progress may be being made.
NGOs echo words of top DEFRA scientist and demand biofuel obligation be postponed
24 March, 2008
A coalition of some of Britain's biggest environmental and development groups have sent a joint letter (1) to Government warning that the UK's biofuel policy risks doing more harm than good in the fight against climate change and global poverty.
The intervention intensifies pressure on the Government following a BBC interview in which Professor Bob Watson, DEFRA's chief scientific advisor, cast serious doubt on the plans and insisted that it would be "insane" if the policy ended up having the opposite effect to the one intended. (2)
Posted by jamie — 24 March 2008 at 10:00am
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In a few weeks' time on Tuesday 15
April, every fuel company in the UK will be obliged to include a
certain amount of biofuel in their petrol and diesel supplies. This is because,
to comply with EU policies, the government has decreed we will all be using
biofuels whether we want to or not but as you're probably aware, a lot of
people have severe concerns about this.
Yesterday afternoon, the crew of one of our
ships - the Arctic Sunrise - swung into action in the French port of Caen.
Their mission: to prevent a shipment of Amazon timber, acquired from companies
linked to illegal logging activities, from entering the EU. And after nearly 24
hours, they're still going strong.
The timber is aboard the Galina III and, as it
tried to enter the port, five Greenpeace volunteers (including a group from the
UK)
climbed aboard where they attached themselves to two of the ship's cranes.
Since then, the Galina has been unable to dock to unload its cargo, a mixture of
timber species with wonderfully exotic names: amarelao, macaranduba, ipe,
garapeira, cumaru and jarana to name a few. And as I write, the team on the
cranes is still holding out.
Posted by jamie — 19 February 2008 at 1:00pm
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Yesterday, EU farm ministers voted on whether
to approve the use of new GM crops including a variety of potato developed by
chemical giant BASF. According to Reuters, they failed to reach a consensus
which is good in the sense that the proposed crops weren't approved, but bad
because the decision will now be passed back to the European Commission. The EC
is heavily pro-GM so it's likely that all five crops under consideration will
be approved with a nod and a wink.