Greenpeace New Zealand Weblog

It’s not quite snakes on planes, but Greenpeace’s new advertising campaign featuring cows on buses certainly gives new meaning to the term “movable feast” (if you’re not a vegetarian that is). The ads are intended to highlight the work we’re doing on climate change and agriculture. Designed by global ad agency Mojo, they use the exhaust smoke of the buses to great effect – when the bus smokes, it looks like the smoke is coming out of the cow’s mouth. In other words - methane! (Remember the “fart tax” was a misnomer, almost all methane emissions from cows come from belching).

Turns out getting just the right shot of a New Zealand cow munching on pasture then putting it on the back of a bus is easier said than done. Thankfully our poster-cow Lynn (the Demi Moore of the bovine world) was impeccably behaved. We escorted her, her two minders and a photographer to a farm south of Auckland one mild spring morning in September and bribed her with cow biscuits to get the grazing angle just right.

The buses hit the road today – one in Auckland and one in Wellington.

We’ve also launched an exciting new section on our website (www.greenpeace.org.nz/smartfarming), looking at how New Zealand farmers can farm in a less emissions-intensive way.

From a distance, they look like nothing more than thin red lines on the horizon, easily lost amid the tumbling blue of the Atlantic Ocean. But get closer and the significance of the 140m-long tubes, 10 years in the making by a British company and now floating in the sea off the coast of Portugal, becomes apparent: they are the beginning of an entirely new industry in the hunt for clean power.

Wave power is seen by some as the holy grail of renewable energy but it hasn’t become a commercial reality - until now that is - the world’s first commercial wave power farm has gone live in Portugal using pelamis sea snakes.

There’s been talk about harnessing the power of the ocean around NZ for sime time with the most recent attempt being the Crest Energy in the Kaipara.

Early in 2007  PGP director Chris Curlett said he thought “the first wave farm could be fully commissioned in New Zealand within the next two-and-a-half to three years. And that would be operational, feeding power direct into the grid … There’s no question that New Zealand’s got the most marvellous wave pattern for marine energy all the way up the west coast.” Read more »

Bunny McDiarmid

Originally published in the Christchurch Press
By Bunny McDiarmid
Executive Director - Greenpeace NZ

Taking action on climate change is proving a hard thing for some to stomach in New Zealand, largely because the problem for us lies predominantly with agriculture. It’s the elephant in the room, except it’s a cow. Just to confuse matters, the cow is sometimes referred to as a “golden goose”. But what if the goose was laying itself into an early grave and dragging clean green New Zealand down with it?
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This is a fascinating look behind the scenes of the Greenpeace US homeless polar bears campaign.

This is a must watch!

Pupils at one of the schools taking part in Greenpeace’s Climate Challenge ( www.greenpeace.org.nz/theclimatechallenge ) have put together a video called “Turning down the Heat”. It’s all about figuring out the characteristics of a great environmentalist (which bytheway are found to be: DETERMINATION, IMPACT. KNOWLEDGE, COMMITTMENT and (being) ADVENTUROUS). They also get down to figuring out what New Zealanders can do to help tackle climate change.
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This opinion piece from Bunny McDiarmid our Executive Director is published in the NZ Herald today …

When the Emissions Trading Bill passed last week, Greenpeace sighed with relief. Not so much because this particular piece of legislation is now law, but because politicians can finally stop squabbling over it and get on with implementing stronger, more immediate climate policies.

The bill is a small, necessary step towards New Zealand making a valid contribution to global climate change. But it’s too generous to agriculture and other big polluters and won’t result in the deep emission cuts required.

In the time political leaders have been playing politics over the climate and our biggest polluting companies have been campaigning for massive public subsidies, the Arctic ice cap entered a “death spiral”.

The Arctic Ocean could be totally free of summer ice by 2020. For the first time, it’s possible to sail right around the North Pole.

Meanwhile, it was roundly concluded that a string of particularly ferocious natural disasters worldwide is in line with climate change projections.

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It’s been a pretty unusual ten days for six Greenpeace activists in the UK but yesterday was truly extraordinary. At 3.20pm, the jury came back into court and announced a majority verdict of not guilty! All six defendants - Kevin, Emily, Tim, Will, Ben and Huw - were acquitted of criminal damage.

To recap on how important this verdict is: the defendants campaigners were accused of causing £30,000 of criminal damage to Kingsnorth smokestack from painting. The defence was that they had ‘lawful excuse’ - because they were acting to protect property around the world “in immediate need of protection” from the impacts of climate change, caused in part by burning coal.
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This morning on the wireless (there’s a rough recording below of the actual snippet) I heard Tim Cossar the Chief Executive of the Tourism Industry Association along with Damien O’Connor interviewed about the challenges facing tourism NZ. Damian - our Minister of Tourism - said something like this…

… tourists worried about carbon miles when flying across the globe to reach our isolated little island don’t need to worry because their carbon emissions will be adequately offset by their experience here in NZ where they will learn about the environment in our pristine clean green pure NZ.

That’s not a direct quote but near enough. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I did have a good laugh when I saw this on The Standard though…

Heads in the sand indeed. There’s some scary levels of ignorance down there in the beehive as this post over at hot topic also confirms.

Reminds me of some street theatre we did last year…

Heads in the sand

 

 NZ Tourism Interview snippet [1:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Over the weekend I attended the BlueGreens forum on Waiheke. I was invited to give a presentation and so naturally I jumped at the opportunity. I chose the topic what is necessary, what is fair and what is wise when it comes to tackling climate change and also used the chance to challenge the National Party on its recently-released energy strategy.

This is the second time that Greenpeace has been invited to the National Bluegreens conference and it’s a good thing. There are 80 plus National party delegates and members that show up and it’s a good opportunity to talk to them directly. John Key opened this year’s conference, outlining the party’s target of a 50% reduction in emissions by 2050 and explaining that they’d do some tinkering with the ETS next year if in power - which I have to say was not nearly enough to convince me they are taking climate change seriously.

I was then on a discussion panel with Nick Smith, (the National Party’s Environment spokesperson) and Phil O’Reilly from NZ Business. Greenpeace was clearly the odd one out. Very few people at the event seemed to grasp the link between the environment and the economy and the fact that unrestrained growth can’t be the only thing we’re striving for. The planet is simply not up for it.

Here’s the full text of my speech for the record. Read more »

There is something truly inspiring about the enthusiasm of school kids, and there’s no doubt, its really infectious.

My name is Dan and I have the fantastic job of promoting and coordinating Greenpeace’s newest inter school fundraising / campaigning project. Its called the Greenpeace Climate Challenge and is designed to encourage and show young people about the solutions and benefits of moving towards a less carbon intensive lifestyle. I generally work as an on-street fundraiser and can’t count the number of times adults have told me ‘its the kids you wanna talk to’. It’s true, after all its their World and this project is an opportunity to empower kids and reward them for a range of tasks from changing light bulbs to writing to local MPs. Changing society starts with individuals and issues like climate change can seem overwhelming, for young and old alike, that’s why small changes deserve recognition and young people need to know their actions and opinions count.
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