Greenpeace New Zealand Weblog

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.

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I get really annoyed with the rants from departing industry heads as they try to ‘leave us wanting more’ before they exit stage left.

And so it was with Charlie Pedersen, soon to be ex-federated farmers president. Read more »

Land conversion happening in the Tahorakuri Forest near Taupo on the North Island. The land is being converted into large-scale intensive dairy farms. Greenpeace/John Cowpland

Today New Zealand is playing host to the UN-sponsored World Environment Day, a day of feel-good publicity stunts and a lot of back-patting over how well behaved New Zealand is when it comes to the environment.

The PR material says New Zealand is hosting the event because we are “among a pioneer group of countries committed to accelerating a transition to a low carbon and carbon-neutral economy”. Really? Why? Because we have a Prime Minister for whom “carbon neutrality” rolls off the tongue with such ease? Because our landscape is naturally characterised by large patches of green? Because we’ve talked the clean green talk for so long that people have forgotten to check if it’s actually true?

It could of course be argued that, far from accelerating anywhere, we’re going into a distinct backward slide when it comes to the environment. You only need to look at the recent State of The Environment Report to see that our scorecard is looking pretty grim and there are some frightening trends that need to be urgently reversed. Read more »

The Rainbow Warrior in Wellington with the Beehive in the background (C) GREENPEACE / SHAROMOV

There is a worrying trend among our political leaders to use an age-old but completely nonsensical and deplorable excuse for doing bad things.

And it is this: “If we don’t do it, someone else will.”

We’ve had to tolerate this stance a number of times in recent weeks. First, David Parker, Minister for Climate Change, in response to our Lyttelton coal action

We have no intention of stopping the export of coal, and even if we did, it wouldn’t make any difference to climate change, because the countries we export to would just get their coal from somewhere else.

Second, Environment Minister Trevor Mallard, in response to the fact that his own company, SOE Landcorp, is clearing tens of thousands of hectares of forest in the central North Island for conversion to intensive dairying:

“If it (Landcorp) stops work someone else will do it.”

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Undoing dairy (C) GREENPEACE / SHAROMOV

It was a nippy morning and, coming from Auckland I could feel the difference moving down the island, but the physical labour returning over 1000 beautiful native trees to Papatuanuku warmed our bodies and our hearts.

The prestige mountain Tauhora stood in the distance, reminding me of how great our whenua is and the need to protect it. Just beyond us as we worked the land suddenly turned a destructive brown, with diggers working ignorant to the impacts of their actions, and the bigger picture of how the forest conversion to dairy farming will be on the environment and greenhouse emissions contributing to climate change.

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Dairy conversion near Taupo (C) GREENPEACE

While our teams in Taupo did some extreme gardening, I went to the Landcorp headquarters in Wellington to deliver a letter outlining Landcorp’s contribution to climate change and demanding that Landcorp halt its expansion plans for the dairy sector and instead lead the way in sustainable land use practices.

I arrived at the HQ on Allen Street and asked to speak to the Chief Executive, who came out very quickly to meet me. Perhaps they were worried I’d lock myself on to something!

I gave him the letter and then we had a great little debate. It went something like this …

They don’t own the land and therefore they have no say over what it’s used for.

(I pointed out that they lease it and do make the decisions about what it’s used for – in fact they’re playing a central role in the deforestation and conversion to dairy)
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All is very quiet on the good ship this morning. Half the troops have abandoned their posts! Usually at this hour the mess is filled with blurry-eyed Greenpeacers, but today it is just Tapio, mad Finnish engineer, talking about the vagaries of onboard filter coffee.

So where is everyone? Sometime late yesterday, about 15 people packed themselves into a couple of mini-vans. Sleeping bags were thrown in the back, along with spades. One girl had a very nice brand-spanking new navy blue spade. I had a surge of spade envy, mainly because I don’t even own one, let alone a shiny blue one.

There was talk of a dairy in the forest. They were heading North, they said, to a land where morning meant a chorus of cows, but trees were scarce. Some people were dressed in Swandries. And everyone seemed excited. I waved them off.

“Good luck with your tools!” I yelled.

It was after about 11 hours of running between bunk and toilet late yesterday that I began to ask myself: “what the $%#@ am I doing? Is this really worth it? WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME????!?!”.

Which brings me to what I am doing. In fact, what we’re all doing. The main purpose of this ship tour is to talk climate change – to anyone who’ll listen really. Because there’s a sense in New Zealand that the climate problem is solved; that the government is doing all it can, and that on a global scale, we’re totally doing our bit. But a) this actually isn’t true and b) the risk with this attitude is that it leads to complacency, and people forget that we’re up against the biggest threat that civilisation as a whole has ever faced.

So we’re going out there to remind people that there is lots more to be done and that the time to do it is now. Read more »

Tim Cronshaw had a very one sided article in the Press yesterday about what the Government’s ‘Emissions Trading Scheme’ (ETS) may cost dairy farmers to reduce their emissions from cows, on the farm and energy used in the manufacturing process.

Cronshaw quotes Wellington analysts Infometrics who modeled that the Government’s ETS scheme could hit dairying production by a third in 2025.

Fonterra says reducing the carbon footprint of dairy farms would cost its suppliers 3c/kg of milk solids in 2010, 10c by 2013 and 30c by 2025 calculating that reducing greenhouse gas emissions will cost its dairy farmers $500 million a year by 2025.

Those are scary numbers but so are these. Read more »