forests

This new video has just been produced by our colleagues on the other side of the pond as a reminder that Kimberly-Clark, the makers of Kleenex, are still ravaging forests in North America to produce their tissues.

Huge areas in the Amazon rainforest are illegally logged to clear land for soya plantations © Greenpeace/Beltra

Some good news just in from Brazil, where soya traders have reinforced their commitment to boycott soya grown in newly deforested areas of the Amazon.

Clearing-cutting to make space for new soya plantations has been one of the main causes of rainforest destruction in recent years, which is why we campaigned successfully for a moratorium (temporary ban) three years ago.

Prince Charles has a cunning plan to protect rainforests like this one along the banks of the Congo river © Stok/Greenpeace

The almost complete lack of green issues on the G20 agenda has had heads shaking both in our office and across the environmental movement, yet there was one result this week worth celebrating. It didn't come from the G20 directly, but the presence of so many world leaders was an excellent opportunity for Prince Charles to gather many of them together to talk about rainforests.

For some time now, the Prince has (like us) been promoting the idea that stopping deforestation in places like the Amazon and Indonesia is an excellent way to put the brakes on climate change. His recent trip to the Amazon (documented by the Sun's new environment editor) was just the latest demonstration of the Prince's passion for the issue.

There are some alarming stories in the press today about how much of the Amazon rainforest will be lost due to climate change. According to a new report from the Met Office's Hadley Centre, up to 85 per cent of it will disappear if we see a 4C rise in global temperatures.

It's a nightmare scenario and on the face of it, it makes you wonder if we shouldn't just throw in the towel - I have to admit to the occasional dark thought along those lines myself. But on the contrary, information like this illustrates yet again how crucial it is that we address climate change and deforestation together, and do it now before we get locked in to huge temperature rises.

Fox News is a strange beast which is at once both wonderfully entertaining and deeply, deeply disturbing. Here in the UK, we're insulated from its 'Day Today gone real' presence (although I'm not so smugly parochial that I haven't noticed our own TV news drifting in a similar direction) and if it weren't for the wonder of YouTube, we might not see it at all.

So a big thumbs up to Rolf Skar from Greenpeace USA who gave an interview this week about the new tissue paper guide they've recently released. The two newscasters get to do a tissue texture test (recycled comes out good), and Rolf valiantly presses on when one says she finds recycled toilet paper "really hard and scratchy". But there are creams you can get for that.