Greenpeace New Zealand Weblog

A busy day for team Greenpeace in Belgium yesterday. At 8 in the morning activists blocked traffic on the Ring around Brussels, the busiest traffic ‘knot’ in the country. After safely re-routing traffic, 30 of them unrolled a 180 square meter green carpet on the road and used it to visualise the alternatives for the planned road expansion of the Flemish government. In the run up to regional elections in June, they wanted to put these road expansion plans on the political agenda. Read more »

Last summer, for the first time in recorded history, boats could circumnavigate the North Pole. To the oblivious observer, this might seem like a good thing. Perhaps some green entrepreneur will build resorts on Finland’s Svalbard Islands. However, as we know, there’s a dark side…

The year 2009 may be the tipping point in human history when society responds to or ignores global warming. The UN climate meeting scheduled for Copenhagen in December may be humanity’s last chance to avoid total chaos. It is too late to avoid some climate chaos.

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This Earth Day, help us turn 3 million people into climate activists: starting with you:

http://www.greenpeace.org/me2

Author, activist and 350.org founder Bill McKibben is in the country soon and I’d recommend you check him out.

Bill is the author of several books including “The End of Nature”, a seminal book on climate change and “Deep Economy” an US national bestseller about building local economies. He is also the founder of 350.org, a rapidly growing global movement working to raise awareness about and action on climate change issues.

McKibben has public appearances planned in Dunedin, Wanaka, Christchurch, Wellington, Raglan, Hamilton and Auckland. The full tour PDF (which includes the details of each appearance) is downloadable here (PDF).

Greenpeace is excited to host a climate action discussion with NGOs with McKibben building up the pressure for Governments around the world to do good at Copenhagen. If you’re in Auckland you might want to catch up with him on the lovely Waiheke Island, where the great Transition Towns network are hosting his talk.

May 3rd, 4 – 5.30pm at Te Huruhi school hall. Entry by Koha. RSVP to Gabrielle 372-2200

I’m Karli and I’m the oceans campaigner at Greenpeace NZ but right now I’m in Baltimore attending 50th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty.

My first impressions arriving to this historic  meeting of the Antarctic Treaty parties was the urgency of the task ahead. Scientists who have been working on International Polar Year projects gave truly alarming descriptions of climate change impacts already being felt at the Poles.

In the oceans, the impacts of climate change (warming and the loss of sea ice) and ocean acidification (the evil twin of climate change) coupled with increased whaling and fishing activities spell trouble for this fragile marine environment.
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Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki, two activists from Greenpeace Japan now known as the Tokyo Two, face trial and a potential ten year prison sentence for exposing a scandal striking at the heart of Japan’s government whaling operation.

Toru Suzuki is one of our activists in Japan, now facing a maximum of 10 years in prison for exposing a crime at the heart of Japan’s whaling industry.

The so-called “scientific” whaling fleet has now returned to port from the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary for what we hope will be the last time, and it is almost one year since Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki exposed the embezzlement of whale meat by the fleet’s crew.

Junichi and Toru are still on trial for their efforts to expose this crime, however, recently their bail conditions were relaxed slightly, enabling them to come back to work – just not with each other.

Here’s Toru’s reflections on his first few weeks back at work… Junichi posted a few days ago, on his return…

I’m so glad to finally be able to come back home to the office.Well, I did feel little strange for the first five minutes, as it was my first time here in nine months. But it wasn’t long until it felt like the home it used to be.

Since I was released under bail restrictions, the most disappointing thing for me was that I was unable to see my Greenpeace colleagues.

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Here’s a blog from John Hocevar, our US oceans campaign director

Ahoy!

As Somali pirates have captured the world’s attention over the past week, I’ve been up to my neck in pirates of a different sort. Greenpeace got a tip that several Spanish owned vessels blacklisted for engaging in pirate fishing were en route to Singapore to offload illegally caught Chilean sea bass, or Patagonian toothfish. We alerted U.S. authorities at NOAA, the Coast Guard, and the State Department, each of which deals with pirate fishing. All three agencies were helpful and responsive, sharing the information we provided with other governments, updating databases, and even contacting the Singapore Navy Maritime Operations Center.
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I’m Gareth, the new Climate Campaigner here at Greenpeace. Yesterday with the rest of the climate team out of the office working hard I got to do my first media interview as a Greenpeace representative which was great fun and all very exciting but on one of the most complex issues I’ve had to speak on.

Climate Change Minister Nick Smith had just released a press release on the 2009 Net Position Report - an annual report complied by various Governmental bodies showing our projected balance of Kyoto units – essentially how good or bad we’re doing at keeping our Kyoto obligations. The report showed that New Zealand is now expected to exceed its Kyoto target by 9.6 million tonnes – a surplus worth an estimated $241 million. The results were in contrast to 2008 which projected a deficit of 21.7 million tonnes (an estimated cost of $546 million).

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As a frontline fundraiser and community campaigner I get the general feeling that public opinion is leaning towards the necessity of action on climate change. More and more people are telling me that a movement needs to happen, because government action (or lack of) is not in tune with public opinion. I don’t know what the polls are saying but people who talk to me are showing real disappointment at our current standing on the world stage. Read more »