Greenpeace

Unilever supports rainforest destruction moratorium

Greenpeace just announced a big win in its anti-palm oil campaign: just five days after launching a campaign to pressure food and cosmetics giant Unilever to stop purchasing palm oil from rainforest destroyers, Unilever met Greenpeace halfway. Apparently nervous about the prospect of orangutan-suited activists continuing to scale their corporate headquarters (see picture), the company agreed to support a legal moratorium on rainforest destruction. Given that Unilever uses five percent of the world's palm oil and chairs the so-called Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, that's big news!

Greenpeace report calls carbon capture and sequestration ‘false hope’

On Monday, Greenpeace released a new report called "False Hope: Why carbon capture and storage won’t save the climate." Here are the conclusions, as summarized by Ken Ward Jr.: • Adequate technology is not expected to be commercially available until 2030, while leading climate experts say carbon dioxide emissions need to level off by 2015 […]

Greenpeace discovers new sponge species

Greenpeace recently announced the discovery of a new species of sponge, Aaptos kanuux, as a result of its deep explorations of the Bering Sea last summer. Here's a video of the sponge from Greenpeace, and more info from my fellow Green Corps alum, Greenpeace Oceans Campaigner John Hocevar:

Fortune Brainstorm Green

I flew down to Pasadena today for the Fortune Brainstorm: Green conference. There’s tons of interesting stuff on the agenda — a mix of corporate types and NGO types, technology and policy topics. I’m moderating a panel on Monday night called "Meet the Rabble Rousers," an informal discussion wherein activists answer questions about the rabble […]

MoJo uncovers the eco-spies

Mother Jones has a blockbuster scoop today on the private security firm that spied on green groups on behalf of corporate clients: A private security company organized and managed by former Secret Service officers spied on Greenpeace and other environmental organizations from the late 1990s through at least 2000, pilfering documents from trash bins, attempting […]

Greenpeace and FOE call Climate Security Act too limited; too slow

It's time to call the Lieberman-Warner love train back to the station. This is not to say that we don't urgently need to immediately start reducing atmospheric GHG concentrations and get policies in place that price carbon. It is instead simply the observation that as L-W morphs into ever greater complexity, it becomes an ever-worse way to meet that goal. Like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, I rather doubt that L-W will go anywhere close to far enough to cure AGW. But I am quite certain that the side effects of this purported cure are worse than the disease.

Herewith, a few rather simple distinctions to prove the point. Consider each of the following either/or propositions, and ask yourself which would be a hallmark of good GHG policy.

(Hint 1: the right answer is always A. Hint 2: the Lieberman-Warner answer is always B.)

Déjà nuke

This lede made me laugh out loud: As concerns about greenhouse gases and global warming mount, nuclear energy is getting a second look in California, with supporters ranging from the governor to at least one environmental activist. Oh goodie! Who’s the token "at least one environmental activist" this time? Is it Patrick Moore, 20-year industry […]

Norway says whale consumption is good for the planet

Eating whale meat is better for the planet than eating beef, pork, or chicken, according to a comparative carbon-emissions calculation by Norwegian lobbying group the High North Alliance. Says the alliance’s Rune Froevik, in what may be a bit of an exaggeration, “Basically it turns out that the best thing you can do for the […]

Greenpeace takes Heathrow

Today, Greenpeace UK held a peaceful protest against the proposed expansion of Heathrow Airport in London (the addition of a third runway). The activists managed to walk out onto the tarmac and up onto the tailfin of a plane, where they hung a huge banner: This effortless breach of security at one of the world’s […]