Greenpeace activists deploy banner reading, “No Fish No Future” next to the world’s biggest tuna fishing vessel Albatun Tres. Greenpeace has been highlighting the overfishing of tuna in the Pacific for the past two months. Greenpeace/Paul Hilton
Today Greenpeace took action against the biggest and most devastatingly efficient tuna catching vessel in the world, the Spanish owned purse ‘super, super seiner’ (because it is so amazingly large) Albatun Tres.
After chasing the vessel for five days over 1,000 nautical miles, the Esperanza finally caught up with the Albatun Tres this morning, and caught it red-handed deploying its massive net inside a Kiribati marine area proposed for protection.
The colossal ship can net more than 3,000 tonnes of tuna in a single fishing trip - almost double the entire annual catch of some Pacific countries – however, despite this major haul and the perilously low levels of tuna stocks worldwide, its Spanish owners do not think this is enough and are looking at deploying more ships in the area. Read more »
This year’s Budget - just presented by Finance Minister Michael Cullen - does not read like the Budget of a Government committed to solving climate change.
Here’s a couple of new initiatives contained therein:
$1 million over four years will assist communities and local government to adapt to the physical impacts of climate change.
Transport Minister Annette King also announced the government will provide $4.8 million over four years to enhance weather forecasting for severe weather events.
How ambulance at the bottom of the cliff is that?! “Hold on to your hats New Zealanders, we know climate change is coming, but don’t worry we’ll let you know in good time and we’ll help fix a drainpipe in the aftermath.”
Greenpeace Japan delivering stolen whale meat to the Tokyo Public Prosecutor’s Office
Following last week’s revelation that crew members from the fleet responsible for Japan’s so-called ’scientific’ whaling programme had for many years been stealing and illegally selling off prime whale bacon at the end of each annual hunt.
Last week more than 40,000 Greenpeace supporters wrote to the Japanese government to demand an investigation. Yesterday the Tokyo district Public Prosecutor has confirmed that there will be one.
Greenpeace will be cooperating in every way possible to ensure that it is a full investigation, to the highest levels and not simply the scapegoating of a few individual crew members.
Greenpeace Japan spent four months cracking open what appears to be a major conspiracy of corruption at the heart of Japan’s government-backed, sham scientific whaling operation. An informer associated with whale hunting company Kyodo Senpaku told us that not only their employees were involved - officials from the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) - the agency that carries out the so-called “scientific research” work on board the whaler’s factory ship Nisshin Maru - were almost certainly aware of the thefts as well.
While the investigation is underway, we all need to push the Japanese government now to shut down whaling and cut off its tax subsidies (which currently amount to around £2.4 million every year). We also want to ensure that they investigate this scandal at the highest level - not just by scapegoating crew members.
Please feel free to download this poster and stick it up at home, at school or in your local café, but please ask permission first.
While many in the NZ business sector are getting on with tackling climate change, the public face of New Zealand business has been hijacked in recent weeks by big polluters.
We’ve seen an orchestrated attempt by big business to scuttle proposed climate policies. Many aren’t happy to see their polluting plans challenged, including state-owned polluters like Solid Energy, major electricity users like Rio Tinto (Comalco), and the farming lobby.
Their message is disguised with voodoo economics and scaremongering, but is clearly: “don’t expect us to help New Zealand tackle climate change”.
That is illustrated very well by the ransom note published in Wellington’s Dominion Post newspaper this morning on behalf of The Standover Group.
Who is The Standover Group? And did they really call themselves that?? Find out more here: www.standover.co.nz
A banner nfront of the Marsden B power station in Northland. Greenpeace ran a successful 3-year campaign against the station’s recommissioning and convertion to run on coal.
The National party has pulled its backing for the emissions trading scheme. Leader John Key says the whole thing has been rushed and that his party will not support the Bill when it gets voted on in Parliament on June 10. The party has also confirmed that it does not support the Government’s proposed 10-year ban on new fossil fuel generation (which is to say new coal and gas fired power stations for electricity).
Both announcements bode badly for New Zealanders, on a number of levels. First, they suggest that the potential future leader of this country doesn’t give a toss about climate change. Secondly, the more the ETS is delayed, and the more fossil fuel generation allowed, the higher our emissions, therefore the higher our Kyoto bill, and the more that taxpayers must fork out to cover it.
National’s announcement, which came out at the party’s regional conference in Wellington on Sunday, read like propaganda from the Greenhouse Policy Coalition (the group set up to represent and lobby for big business on climate policy). It seems National is caving in to polluters against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders who want action on climate change. Read more »
Here is a Greenpeace opinion-editorial running in the NZ Herald today:
National Party Environment Spokesman Nick Smith debates hia party’s climate change policies at a political debate onboard the Rainbow Warrior in April.
Greenpeace/Sharomov
Big business in New Zealand must be rubbing its hands: its plea to MPs has succeeded: “Don’t take any action on climate change, or if you do, subsidise us enough so we don’t feel it.”
It’s hard to think of a message more out of step with the values of ordinary New Zealanders.
Climate change is the world’s greatest collective challenge. The recent cyclone in Burma demonstrates all too starkly the damage and suffering caused by extreme weather events. Expect more of these events in coming years, and expect them to be more extreme if we don’t take action to deal to their root cause.
Despite this ticking clock, we’ve seen an orchestrated attempt by big business to scuttle proposed climate policies. Many aren’t happy to see their polluting plans challenged, including state-owned polluters like Genesis Energy and Solid Energy and the farming lobby. Read more »
It’s more than 15 years that I’ve now been working for Greenpeace, and normally my work involves making the near impossible high profile projects happen on budgets that are way too small with human resources that are far too few. This is the lot of the Environmental NGO dependent on supporters money. The need to be accountable to our membership is high and we have to squeeze as much out of your dollars as we possibly can. We cannot do this work without the dedication and commitment of our volunteers and of the generous support of the wider constituency that supports the work that Greenpeace is doing on behalf of the planet.
The new office refit for the new Greenpeace HQ here in Auckland is a project that is no different to this, and although we are not working in the field in Indonesia or the Southern Ocean the same principles apply. We cannot do this sort of field work without the offices. Read more »
This is more about the whale meat scandal from Brian up at Greenpeace International in Amsterdam…
Finally, we can tell the story some of us have been sitting on for months now: the whale meat embezzlement we uncovered in Japan, in which stolen cuts of prime whale bacon are smuggled away from the “scientific research” vessels and sold for oodles of yen — one of our informers heard a crew member claim he built a house on his illegal proceeds.
We hit the front page of Japan’s biggest newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, this morning — a first for Greenpeace in Japan, where whale stories have always been hard to sell. But with the Japanese government in seeming constant free fall with corruption scandals being unearthed all the time, whale meat embezzlement — especially since it involves taxpayers’ money — is a monster story.
Stake outs, testimony from informers, hidden cameras and tailing trucks full of stolen goods - it reads like a Hollywood movie, but it was an every day experience for Greenpeace activists in Japan, who have spent four months cracking open a major conspiracy of corruption at the heart of Japan’s government-backed, sham scientific whaling operation.
Today we displayed a cardboard box filled with the best cuts of whale meat, smuggled ashore by the crew of the Japanese whaling factory ship, Nisshin Maru, for illegal trade and personal gain, at the Japanese taxpayer’s expense. The box, along with videotaped testimony and other evidence, suggest widespread embezzelment of whale meat has been occuring for decades under the noses of the public officials who run the whaling programme, and are allowing it to happen.
Bureaucrats ignore theft from taxpayers
Our activists delivered the evidence, including the whale meat, to the Public Prosecutor’s office in Tokyo, calling on it to make a full public enquiry into how deep the corruption runs with the whaling programme. We’re also calling for an end to the USD$4.7 million taxpayer subsidies for the programme, and for the license of the company operating the whale hunt, Kyodo Senpaku, to be withdrawn.
The four-month Greenpeace investigation employed undercover tactics to reveal dramatic evidence of an embezzlement ring involving crewmembers on board the Nisshin Maru. Informers who spoke to the activists claim that senior crew and officials from Kyodo Senpaku turned a blind eye to the whale meat theft, allowing it to continue for decades. One informer associated with Kyodo Senpaku told Greenpeace that officials from the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) - the agency that carries out the so-called “scientific research” work on board the Nisshin Maru - are most likely aware of the thefts as well.
Welcome to the GPNZ blog! Here we'll tell tales, cast nasturciums, talk in parables and offer opinions on stuff that it is, at least in some way related, to the work we do.
This year’s Budget - just presented by Finance Minister Michael Cullen - does not read like the Budget of a Government committed to solving climate change. 
