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THE WITNESS
From solar-powered emails to recycled cities, there are plenty of reasons to feel hopeful for our planet this Earth Day. Although protecting our forests, oceans and air is an endless job, we can also step back and appreciate all the really cool stuff going on all over the world thanks to people coming together and finding a better way. Big or small, these reasons all point to progress that is actually working. Continue reading
Greenpeace’s thermal airship, A.E. Bates, flies over Seattle, a fishing industry hub, to call attention for Bering Sea protection.
Greenpeace will fly its thermal airship over the Seattle area all week with a 75 foot whale-themed banner urging Washington residents to help protect the “Grand Canyons of the Sea.”
Greenpeace and Mission Blue will host an “Evening of Hope” at the Seattle Aquarium to celebrate Alaska’s Bering Sea, a unique ecosystem currently threatened by a billion dollar fishing industry. Continue reading
Introducing the newest class of the Greenpeace Semester!
They hail from many different places: Tennessee, California, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, and Envigado, Colombia. They have joined Greenpeace for the next five weeks in Washington D.C. to learn many of the important skills of environmental activism to take back to their respective communities. They’ll be participating in workshops, skills trainings, and traveling for a week to get experience campaigning on an environmental issue.
Stay tuned and follow their adventures on Twitter, on Tumblr, or future posts here.
Welcome Stephanie, Angie, Melissa, Alexa, Ben, Vinnie, Mackenzie, and Jackie!
The Greenpeace Semester is still accepting applications for our second summer term and fall term. If you’d like to apply, click here.
Today, Greenpeace proudly ads its voice to a growing coalition of groups to urge Tribune Company, publisher of the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune and several other major US newspapers, not to sell their print media to Koch Industries. SIGN OUR PETITION TO TRIBUNE COMPANY CEO PETER LIGUORI TO KEEP TRIBUNE’S NEWSPAPERS OUT OF KOCH’S HANDS.
Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in the US, oversee an estimated $115 billion in annual revenue. The Kochs are each worth $31 billion to $45 billion, and the brothers have a bad habit of funneling tens of millions of dollars to organizations that deny the reality or severity of global warming. They have a keen interest in influencing US politics and culture, hosting secretive gatherings of wealthy elites who collectively raise hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on state and national politics. This quiet circle of business leaders already has a concerning amount of influence in the US media and has prioritized increasing that influence.
Greenpeace’s opposition to the Koch bid for Tribune Co. newspapers is rooted in the billionaire Koch brothers’ proven track record of peddling misinformation on climate change science through media outlets they already have ties to, such as the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, the National Review and the Washington Examiner. And when the Kochs can’t get favorable reporting, they fund organizations to gin up their own media that promote Koch priorities–busting unions, beating back environmental protection laws, smothering public education, watering down healthcare reform, and a variety of other initiatives that only the 1% stand to gain from.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION. And stay tuned for more updates from Greenpeace on our work to keep the Kochs’ corrupting influence out of Tribune Company newspapers.
I’m wearing my new blue t-shirt from Bike to Work Day. It was a beautiful morning on the W.O. & D. trail. I hope you had a good ride yourself or at least wished you had when you saw bikes rolling by.
I was at a meet up stop In Vienna, Virginia, when a man rolled up and asked what was going on. When he heard that this was a distribution point for riders who had registered to get a free t-shirt, he asked “What do you get if you ride to work everyday?”
I didn’t hear a good answer to that from the group, although they offered him a t-shirt, but the obvious one is health, and the other is wealth. Compared to purchasing, insuring, maintaining and fueling a car, bicycling is a good deal with great side effects.
Forest Clearance in Kalimantan, Indonesia
Although it may not have made it to the front page of our newspapers here in the US, there was big news this week for our planet and for some of the last remaining tropical rainforests. The President of Indonesia has extended the forest moratorium, protecting roughly 20 million acres of forest from the threat of deforestation. This was great news, but it does not solve the entire problem because plenty of Indonesia’s forests were left unprotected and deforestation continues to wreak havoc there. Here is Yuyun Indradi, one of my Indonesian colleagues’ account of the news. Continue reading
The Mexican government is likely to authorize the cultivation of genetically engineered (GE) corn in Mexico. And until now Mexican citizens, with the help of organisations like Greenpeace, have managed to prevent agribusiness giants like Monsanto, DuPont and Dow AgroSciences from gaining approval in Mexico for genetically engineered corn.
But this looks like it could change.
The agriculture ministry in Mexico may allow foreign companies to plant genetically engineered corn on 2.4 million hectares of land. Continue reading
A polar bear family in Svalbard.
One of the most rewarding things about my work is that I get to meet people almost everyday who are inspired by Greenpeace.
I met Pennsylvania fine artist Justin Ballew over twitter a couple of weeks ago. Inspired by our save the Arctic campaign, he tweeted us this illustrated poem. The poem is fun and simple, and I emailed him to ask him what inspired him to do this. Here’s what he said: Continue reading
President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are at the center of the IRS controversy
Robust democracy is essential for ecological health; democracy is guaranteed by rights afforded to individuals and groups in civil society.
Greenpeace applauds President Obama for demanding accountability up the chain of command in the matter of political discrimination by the IRS.
We believe as firmly in the rights of all members of society as we do in our own as an organization. Stifling of political speech has no place in our society. We have not always been granted that respect. Greenpeace and allied organizations like the NAACP and Rainforest Action Network have been threatened – with the tax code as a weapon – by our ideological opponents and politicians allied with them. Continue reading
Here’s a cool new toy. A popular article on Forbes today details a new smart phone app called “Buycott,” which is catching the attention of shoppers who want to make sure their money spent on groceries and other basic products isn’t enriching corporations with bad records on social and environmental responsibility.
Take Koch Industries. Greenpeace has written extensively about the Koch brothers’ $67 million in support for groups that deny climate change science and promote industries that pollute our air and water, our politics, and our health. The millions of dollars going to groups like ALEC and the State Policy Network also serves to break unions, privatize education, and water down healthcare reform.
Those are good reasons not to give a dime to the multi-billionaire Koch brothers, who own the vast majority of Koch Industries’ private stock. Yet many consumers may not realize that buying products like Quilted Northern toilet paper or Brawny paper towels contributes to Koch profits through their giant pulp and paper subsidiary, Georgia-Pacific. Nor perhaps did the incoming Obama Administration realize that the 2009 inaugural carpet was made by a Koch subsidiary called INVISTA. What a crummy business deal–the President buys your carpet, then you coordinate hundreds of millions of dollars from billionaires determined to defeat his re-election bid…if only there had been an app!
“I have a question–who bought this Koch Industries carpet? Are you serious?!”
The President’s staff aren’t alone. You may well have Koch products in your house. Continue reading
Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo making opening remarks at the People’s Arctic Council
The Arctic Council meeting in Sweden just wrapped up, and while we were thrilled to deliver photos of 280 global “I Love the Arctic” photos to the delegates including US Secretary of State John Kerry, we were disappointed that the meeting ended with no action to protect the Arctic. Continue reading
