Greenpeace New Zealand Weblog

This is how good Fed Farmers President Don Nicholson would look in his personalised Swandri, if he was just brave enough to slip it on.

Back in July, Greenpeace threw down the gauntlet to new Federated Farmers President Don Nicholson, urging him to be the progressive leader the sector desperately needs on climate change

To mark the occasion, we gifted Don a new Swandri, with CLIMATE HERO emblazoned on the back, and a bumper sticker saying: “I’m rattling my dags over climate change”.

Evidentially Don hasn’t been wearing his swannie and we have reason to believe his quad bike doesn’t sport the sticker.

The Feds have just released a manifesto calling for a renegotiation of both Kyoto and the New Zealand emissions trading scheme, to exclude farm animal emissions. In other words, the organisation wishes to take no responsibility for the fact agriculture makes up a large and growing proportion of emissions both here and internationally. Read more »

I’m considering building a panic room. No, not for if the US elections go horribly wrong, but because the 2008 Vote for the Environment poll has confirmed that neither of New Zealand’s two main political parties cuts it when it comes to climate change.

As the NZ general election looms, Vote for the Environment looks at the fact that New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly increasing, our oceans are being depleted of fish, our rivers, lakes and streams are polluted and our treasured native plants and animals face extinction. The survey asked all eight political parties whether they’d implement 25 environmental policies identified as critical to turn around this decline in New Zealand’s environment. They were invited to say “yes” or “no” and given space to qualify or otherwise comment on their answers. Read more »

Dairy Conversion At John Key’s Electorate Office (c) Greenpeace / Marple

Following yesterday’s lockdown of corporate dairy expansion in the central North Island , Greenpeace continues on its mission to have New Zealand’s biggest climate crime solved….

As the sun rose over sleepy Helensville, we unfurled a truckload of Ready-Lawn around the outside of National Party leader John Key’s electorate office. Then came some pine trees, some two-dimensional cows and a smattering of stumps. Finally a billboard went up saying: “Would John solve this climate crime?”

VIDEO

Would John Stop This Climate Crime

The cutting down of tens of thousands of hectares of forests to make way for mega-farms is scandalous given the current climate crisis, but it’s happening in New Zealand like we’ve never seen before. And we want to know what the National Party leader would do about it should he get into power. So we carried out this faux land conversion on his doorstep. Read more »

The CLIMATE CRIME message carved into fresh dairy pasture on newly cleared forest land

Early this morning Greenpeace activists took action to stop corporate dairy’s assault on New Zealand forests and the climate.

In the central North Island huge swathes of forest are being cleared to make way for industrial dairy mega farms.

Well before dawn this morning, in the forest near Tokoroa, several activists halted the sharp end of the logging operation by locking themselves to heavy equipment.

Meanwhile, on nearby land recently converted from forest to dairy pasture, another team have used rotary hoes to write CLIMATE CRIME in 5m-high letters into the fresh pasture.

Read more »

IN the heat of the fight against GE, Mothers Against Genetic Engineering ( Madge ) displayed seven billboards in Wellington and Auckland showing a naked woman with four breasts and GE branded on her backside.

 We’ve been so focused on climate change that this one nearly slipped by me. You’ll remember the nationwide fight to keep New Zealand GE free. Tens of thousands of us marched, not once but three times, to stop GE crops and food from entering our food-chain. And even though the Government lifted the moratorium on GE release in 2003 New Zealand has been effectively GE Free ever since.

This is now under threat from AgResearch, a Government research institute, which has applied to ‘field test’ GE organisms with

“a range of genetic modifications and maintain these organisms in containment for research, breeding and for the production of products with potential commercial applications”.

Ge Free New Zealand March Up Queen Street, Auckland - September 01, 2001

If it gets approval AgResearch will be able to conduct broad-ranging genetic experiments on a vast range of animals including cows, goats, sheep, pigs, rats, rabbits, possums and chickens. They even want to alter milk composition and have the right to release GE milk onto the market and intend using cells taken from ‘non-Maori humans’ mixing genes from different species to make transgenic animals.  The application is so broad it lists humans as “host organisms” to modify!

It’s really important that as many people as possible oppose this monstrous application. NZ’s GE Free status, food, environment, economic wellbeing and clean green image are at stake.

Please take a moment to make an online submission to help keep New Zealand GE free. Read more »

The Climate Challenge welcomes two new schools this month with Auckland Girls Grammar and Rangi Ruru Intermediate in Christhurch joining the challenge. There are some wonderful examples of kids getting involved and it’s great to see people sponsoring them but we need more! This kind of dedication needs support and recognition.

We also need more schools on board. I understand that teachers and students alike have very busy schedules, with many topics to cover and extra curriculum activities/sports etc, but a shift in consciousness is still necessary, and its important to highlight it and promote it where it is happening.

That’s why I like the Climate Challenge project. The kids I meet are tomorrow’s MP’s, business leaders, farmers, councilors etc, an understanding of our planet’s limitations and solutions to how we can live sustainably needs to become second nature to the way we live, the way we do business, the way we grow food and produce materials and the way we raise our children.
Read more »

Jamie is blogging from aboard the Esperanza as they travel through Indonesia as part of the Forests For Climate tour .. and you can now follow their progress on Google Earth! Just download this Googe Earth layer and you can see when and where the highlights on the tour have occurred. (You’ll need to have Googe Earth installed as well, of course.)

New placemarks will appear automatically as jamie updates the journey, so check back often to see what we’ve been up to and how the campaign is progressing. If you don’t want to install Google Earth, you can also see where we are in your web browser.

 
© Greenpeace/Masaya Noda

Who would have thought that prominent conservationists and leading members of Japan’s fishing industry could come together under the banner “Marine Reserves for Sustainable Sushi? Or that one of the speakers used to represent Japan on whaling issues? Or that Greenpeace Japan would be behind the whole event? It’s a strange world we live in. Read more »

Greenpeace fundraiser Chris talks through our Smartfarming campaign.

Greenpeace took its Smartfarming message to the Central North Island at the weekend, with a presence at the hugely successful three-day Taupo ECOshow. Attended by about 3,000 people from all over the country and host to some fantastic international speakers, the lakeside event involved interactive workshops, presentations, product showcasing and stalls. The theme was ‘choosing sustainability’, with a real focus on taking positive and proactive solutions to the environmental challenges we face. And it followed hot the heels of the launch of Greenpeace’s new “smartfarming” web pages (www.greenpeace.org.nz/smartfarming) and cows-on-buses campaign. Read more »