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 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.

At the Falls Church stop, a group gathered around one of the city’s four police bike officers. The little bells were tinkling warnings to dog walkers, people with kids and all the folks out on the trail. A few people passed me keeping a faster pace.

Certainly this wonderful Friday was a great day to enjoy the trail. Honey locust trees in blossom perfumed the air. Irises added color to the verge and birdsong cheered me on. The trail into D.C. from Virginia is mostly downhill a lot easier than the way home which climbs out of sea level and up into the hills of the Piedmont.

I paused on the George Washington Bridge over the Potomac River. In the shallows near Roosevelt Island I spied turtles with their heads sticking above the water looking around. Out on the main branch, rowers skimmed over the river gracefully. I overtook the lines of cars moving slowly across the bridge and made my way through the busy campus of GWU. Crowds of people headed into offices along Pennsylvania Avenue and a thousand tourists in various matching t-shirts crowded the gates of the White House.

I sent an email to my Greenpeace colleagues asking if they had biked and if they did so regularly. More than 3 dozen told me they biked just above every day including today. No wonder it’s hard to find a place to park your bike in the office. Occasionally, our facilities department warns on the office intercom that a bike is about to be towed.

Relatively speaking, cars haven’t been around that long. Dec. 1, 2013, will mark 100 years since Henry Ford switched on the first automated assembly line. My grandmothers were born before the age of the automobile and they told me about a very different world without pavement. My parents are in the first American generation to use cars for most of their lives. Born in the 1920s, they walked, biked and rowed boats through the 1930s, but when the 1940s rolled around, so did a lot of cars. I was about 7 when my Dad ran alongside me helping me learn to balance a bike. I kept riding right up through the time I had a driver’s license and well into the 1970s. The late 70s came with Bruce Springsteen solidifying the profile of the automobile in songs like “Born to Run.” I rode a bicycle to work at a gas station for awhile and it was always on the radio. I got a Trek 320 when I was in college which made long distance rides possible. Bikes are fantastic way to see the world.

I have a car and I drive when I have to, but when I’m riding a bike I know I am doing something good for me, and for the planet.

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.

I have been fielding calls non-stop over the last couple of days, because as you may have noticed, there has been widespread coverage lately (see here, here and here) on the Indonesian government’s extension of its forest moratorium.

It’s good news.

And it’s encouraging that the President of Indonesia, known as SBY, is renewing his commitment to protect forests – and cut my country’s massive carbon emissions. If the powerful palm oil lobby here in Indonesia had got their way for instance, the forest moratorium would have been scrapped and there would be a free for all to clear land for pulp and paper, palm oil and mining concessions.

Thankfully that did not happen.

But sadly, the moratorium still doesn’t go far enough. As I’ve been telling journalists who have asked for our view on the moratorium extension, the President did not go far enough – he did not strengthen the moratorium to cover all forests and peatland. Like the previous moratorium, the extension only covers primary forests, and rather than ALL natural forest and peatland. This is what’s really needed if we want to save Indonesia’s remaining tigers and orangutans, which are under threat from relentless palm oil, and pulp and paper expansion.

Why is there a moratorium anyway?

A shocking 85% of Indonesia’s emissions are from deforestation and peatland clearance, making Indonesia one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters on the planet, behind countries such as China and the United States. Norway is funding Indonesia’s forests and climate initiative to the tune of US$1 billion, with the aim to create an incentive to protect forests in Indonesia and cut greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a noble aim, and one we have been lobbying (both quietly and loudly) for years now.

So in May 2011, Indonesia introduced a two-year moratorium on permits for new concessions in primary forests and peatlands. While this moratorium was a welcome step in terms of the signals it sent, in practice most of the primary forests that it covers are already legally protected; the remainder are largely inaccessible and not under immediate threat of development. However, it leaves almost 50% of Indonesia’s primary forests and peatlands without any protection as they lie within already designated concessions and other significant areas of high carbon forest are not covered by the moratorium, as they are considered to be secondary forests.

The new two-year moratorium does nothing to fix that.

And furthermore, it does nothing about crucial issues of governance, which we feel goes to the heart of the matter. Without proper oversight and enforcement, the moratorium is a weak decree.

We have closely monitored the moratorium’s implementation, and for the two years during the last moratorium we still found cases of overlap with concessions and some deforestation (encroachment) in protected areas.

That’s not to mention that the Ministry of Forestry has changed forest functions (from protected forest to production forest) and forest status from forest area to non-forest area.

So what are we going to do?

A lot.

More work needs to be done to harmonize spatial planning, developing sectoral policies and maps, stronger law enforcement measures (including addressing corruption and money laundering in the forest sector) and mechanisms for social conflict resolution. We will be pushing (quietly and loudly) to get this done.

And we’ll continue investigating and publicizing cases of deforestation, the companies responsible and the laws that need strengthening.

We’ll remind the President that the path to zero deforestation means more than signing a decree.

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.

Mexico is the birthplace of corn, what is known as the “centre of origin” where the original genetic pool of worldwide corn is preserved and should be protected from genetic contamination.

Why?

It’s like a genetic storehouse. If current corn varieties planted on a large scale around the world were affected by a fatal disease, it is essential to be able to go back to the centre of origin and find a variety resistant to that disease. There are risks to our food security if planting of GE corn in Mexico goes ahead. If Mexico is contaminated with GE corn, and if it reduces the existing biodiversity of corn, it might limit our ability to find a suitable replacement.

Recommendations to protect Mexico’s corn have come from many quarters. Following an official visit to Mexico, Olivier de Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food,recommended in a January 2012 report that the Mexican President should reinstate the moratorium on GE corn, both because of its impact on biodiversity and on farmers’ rights.

The Mexican government ignored this recommendation.

Greenpeace Mexico asked its citizens to send an email to the President of Mexico. Over 30,000 have already responded.

Now it is your turn to support the cause and make your voice heard.

Please sign our online petition to the Mexican government against GE corn.

Gracias!

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:

“I am a fine artist that does oil portraits and landscapes, mostly by finger painting.  I create works that inspire and connect the viewer with the work. My landscapes have included a lot of mountains and snow, and I have always wanted to travel to the Arctic to document it on canvas. Over the past year I have read articles and seen footage of the disappearing ice. The feeling of doing something to help is strong, so i decided to start with this simple story about a polar bear and her cub.”

Check out his poem below. You can see more of Justin’s work on Pinterest and Twitter.