Greenpeace New Zealand Weblog

   – Originally posted by Brian over at Greenpeace International

So, Japan has a new government. For all of us who have been single-mindedly pursuing a complete end to whaling for decades now, there’s only one question that matters: what does this mean for the country’s whaling policy?

I suspect the bureaucrats responsible for whaling have gotten a little fed up of questions in the press about the cost of the programme to taxpayers (about 60 million US a year), the continuing decline in sales, the continuing increase in unsold whale meat, and the mounting foreign relations disasters the “scientific research programme” trails in its wake. The whaling industry in Japan right now is a wounded beast, and like any wounded beast it’s lashing back with abandon — as evidenced by the arrest of our activists, Junichi and Toru, for daring to expose corruption in the whaling industry.

Today a new bit of evidence of a bunkering down by the industry comes in. Read more »

Population: The real inconvenient truth

In 1972, Ben and Dorothy Metcalfe from the budding Greenpeace Foundation in Canada attended the world’s first UN Conference on the Human Environment, in Stockholm, where they succeeded in putting nuclear bomb tests on the agenda with the help of Australia and Japan. However, one critical issue failed to make the agenda of this historic meeting: human population.

Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, urged the delegates to discuss ways to mitigate human population growth as a driving force of ecological destruction. Barry Commoner, the scientist who first detected radioactive Strontium-90 in children’s teeth, argued against Ehrlich, insisting that human population growth did not pose a critical environmental threat. Technology, he believed, would allow us to feed billions more people, and the real issue is wasteful consumption by the rich.

Ehrlich agreed about excessive consumption, but maintained that sheer population growth would degrade the planetary ecosystems and lead to humanitarian and ecological catastrophes. He urged environmentalists to advocate a global contraception drive to reduce unwanted pregnancies and the human fertility rate. Ehrlich’s proposals, however, collided with cultural, political, and religious resistance. The Stockholm conference avoided discussing population, and the environmental movement since 1972 has almost entirely ignored human population growth. Nevertheless, the nagging issue remains, 36 years and three billion people later. Read more »